Alphabet’s Drone Program Project Wing Hits Turbulence

Is Alphabet’s drone delivery project, dubbed Project Wing, in trouble?

News earlier this week of a management shakeup at the unit, where two leaders were reported by the Wall Street Journal as being “pushed out” from the project as infighting marked internal struggles, might suggest some difficulties within the operation or at least its direction.

As reported by the WSJ, disputes had arisen over the initiative (which was born within the Google X research lab) between program head Dave Vos; the highest-ranking commercial executive, Sean Mulling; and Project Wing’s commercial and engineer teams. Project Wing exists as part of Alphabet’s so-called other bets unit, which looks to develop nascent technologies.

In addition to the executive departures, Bloomberg reported separately that Project Wing has ended a partnership with Starbucks, while there had been, according to an unnamed Google X employee, disagreements over the level of access to consumer data Alphabet had been seeking. Earlier this year, Alphabet and its front project had committed to a pilot program that would deliver Chipotle burritos to students at Virginia Tech.

The company told CNBC that Project Wing continues unabated, with confirmation of the fact that Vos had left, and that “what we’re doing now is developing the next phase of our technology and, as always, are thinking in a very broad way about all the potential use cases for delivery by unmanned aerial system. While there’s still a lot of work to be done, we believe that opening the skies to faster, more efficient transportation of goods is a moonshot worth pursuing.”