Google ATAP

ATAP (Advanced Technology And Projects)

Company type	Google group
Industry	Research
Headquarters	1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mt. View, CA 94043
Area served	Worldwide
Owner	Google (Alphabet)
Number of employees	300
Website	atap.google.com

Google's Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP) is a skunkworks team and in-house technology incubator, created by former DARPA director Regina Dugan. ATAP is similar to X, but works on projects, granting project leaders time—previously only two years—in which to move a project from concept to proven product. According to Dugan,^[1] the ideal ATAP project combines technology and science, requires a certain amount of novel research, and creates a marketable product. Historically, the ATAP team was born at Motorola Mobility and kept when Google sold Motorola Mobility to Lenovo in 2014;^[2] for this reason, ATAP ideas have tended to involve mobile hardware technology.

The team embodies principles that former Google VP Dugan used at DARPA.^[3] One of these principles is to create small teams of high performers. Another is to make use of resources outside the organizational box; ATAP has worked with hundreds of partners in more than twenty countries, including schools, corporations, startups, governments, and nonprofits. Standing contracts are in place with a number of top-flight schools, such as Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Caltech, to facilitate rapid research arrangements when needed.