By Rolfe Winkler And Alistair Barr
Google Inc. is building self-driving cars and balloons to beam
Internet service from the sky. Now it also wants to make giant
TVs.
Google's secretive advanced-projects lab is developing a display
composed of smaller screens that plug together like Legos to create
a seamless image, according to three people familiar with the
project.
With the modular pieces, the screen could be made into different
sizes and shapes, the people said.
The previously undisclosed project is led by Mary Lou Jepsen, a
former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor best known
for co-founding the One Laptop Per Child project, an ambitious but
ultimately unsuccessful project to give cheap laptops to tens of
millions of children in poor countries.
Ms. Jepsen co-founded three startups around display technology.
The most recent, Pixel Qi, specializes in low-power displays that
can be read in direct sunlight. She now heads the display division
inside Google X, Google's futuristic products lab. Her small team
appears to include veteran engineers from Samsung Electronics Co.
and Qualcomm Inc. among other companies, according to profiles
posted on LinkedIn.
"I loved flashing colored lights as a kid, and I just kept going
with that," she said in a talk to developers at a Google conference
in 2013. According to her website, she created a system in the
early 1990s to project video on the Moon but abandoned it for
health reasons.
Much about her current project isn't known, including the size
of the modules, the potential size of the giant display, or why
Google is interested. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.
In theory, such a large screen might be used to watch television
or movies, browse the Internet and read email, perhaps
simultaneously, said Riddhi Patel, research director at NPD
DisplaySearch.
Ms. Patel said the largest screens today are about 110 inches
diagonally, slightly more than nine feet. A Samsung model that
measures 105 inches is listed for $120,000 on Amazon.
Even so, Ms. Patel said she doesn't see a need for ultra-large
screens in homes today. Before consumers would adopt such
technology, she said, manufacturers will have to make the screens
cheaper and easier to install and use.
Among the problems that the group is trying to solve, the people
familiar with the project said, is how to make display modules that
are "seamless" so that people looking at a giant screen wouldn't
see the borders between the modules. The project remains at an
early stage and has been kept secret, even within Google, partly
because the technical challenges are as large as the planned
screens, one of the people said.
"The big challenge is to electronically, and through software,
do the stitching between the seams," another person familiar said.
Google X is trying to recruit more display experts to work on the
problem, the person added.
Google X may be getting help from Gecko Design, a mechanical
engineering and product design company that the research lab
acquired in August.
Gecko worked on the One Laptop Per Child project. In August,
Gecko Chief Executive Jacques Gagné said Gecko had been working
with Google X since 2013 on a project he wouldn't disclose. He said
Gecko was joining the research lab to work on a "variety of
cutting-edge projects."
Wednesday, Mr. Gagné declined to comment on whether his team is
working on the Google X display effort.
Microsoft Corp. has been working on large display technology
since at least 2012 when the software company acquired Perceptive
Pixel. Founded by Jeff Han, the startup has made touch-screen
systems larger than 80 inches for many years.
During a Microsoft developer conference in 2012, Han predicted
that giant displays someday will be in every meeting room,
conference room and classroom.
Google has had mixed results with its futuristic hardware.
Google Glass, its Internet-connected eyewear, has recently seen
employee defections ahead of an anticipated rollout in 2015. The
device has suffered from its nerdy image and privacy concerns.
Google's cheap Chromebook laptops and Chromecast TV streaming
device are both popular with consumers.
Google has previously disclosed a handful of projects inside
Google X. Besides Google Glass, the unit is also home to Google's
self-driving car project; a futuristic contact lens for diabetics
that could use tears to measure blood-glucose levels; a project to
deliver Internet access from balloons in the stratosphere; as well
as a new life sciences team collecting data to understand human
health.
Write to Rolfe Winkler at rolfe.winkler@wsj.com and Alistair
Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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