Google’s co-founder and CEO Larry Page (Photo ©Marcin Mycielski) announced the launch of Calico (California Life Company ), a company that has a really ambitious purpose: challenging the problem of aging and the diseases associated with it. The ultimate goal is longevity or even immortality.

It’s been clear for some time that in Google there was an interest in transhumanist ideas, also thanks to the collaboration with Ray Kurzweil announced at the end of 2012. However, in that case it seemed normal that a company like Google would hire someone like Kurzweil to achieve progress in projects that concern the possibility for machine learning and language processing. Instead, Calico will work into biological research.

In a note published on Google+, Larry Page stated that the problem of old age affects everyone and that the problems associated with it have consequences that can be very tough on the elderly and also on their families. Biotechnologies are still in an early stage of development and in his note Page reminds us that there’s a huge potential to be developed to improve people’s lives.

Life expectancy is increasing in the advanced nations but also in many emerging nations. People are reaching advanced ages often in good health but for many others old age becomes a fight against serious diseases, often disabling. Various forms of cancer continue to affect not only the elderly but also young people and, despite the advances in medicine, the victims continue to be a lot.

In an interview with Time magazine about the launch of the project Calico, Larry Page stated that defeating cancer would add about three years to people’s average life expectancy. This is just one of Calico’s purposes because the ultimate goal is not just longevity but staying young.

Those statements by Larry Page are important but what’s the substance behind them? Arthur D. Levinson will be Calico’s CEO. Since 1999, Levinson has been chairman of Genentech, a company that works in the biotechnology field of which for a time he was also the CEO. Since 2011 he also been on Apple’s board of directors. In the past he’s also been a member of Google’s board of directors.

Larry Page admits that it’s a long-term work so it will take years before we can hope to achieve real results. For now everything is very general and we don’t know how we’d address the social consequences of longevity, starting with overpopulation. Sure, there’s a universe out there, it would be no wonder if Google could take us into space. It wouldn’t be more difficult than defeating death.

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