"labs" was an unfortunate name, google labs was about product experiments rather than basic research. what you want is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_X_Lab

"labs" was an unfortunate name, google labs was about product experiments rather than basic research. what you want is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_X_Lab http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_X_Lab, whence emerged (in the "what has google done for us lately" department) the self-driving car and the augmented-reality glasses.