Will Alphabet's ambitious projects become reality? Meatless meat, cancer-detecting band and more

Google's parent company Alphabet has been focusing on the other bets, or at least the shareholders meeting made some of us feel so. The GoogleX projects now have their own space and division, and hearing what some of these are up to, will make you sit up straight and take notice. They sound like a sci-fi movie or some science fantasy, and some experts believe them to be just that.At the recent shareholders meeting Eric Schmidt spoke about meatless meat or 'nerds over cattle' as he likes to call it. So, the search giant has made its interest quite clear in ways to make meat from plants and other organisms. According to a report by LiveMint, the company may not directly get into the field, but work with some startups who are already on it. In fact, meatless meat is on top of its list. So, how about some lab grown meat next time?Along with meat, 3D printing and VR/AR also make it to the top of the list. Schmidt calls virtual and augmented reality as future revenue generators for gaming, entertainment and sports. It has already set the wheel rolling with Project Tango (now graduated to Tango) with the Lenovo-built Phab2 Pro set to hit stores in September. Its previous Glass may have failed, but Google still believes the technology comes with huge potential. He also sees a lot of potential in 3D printing, but believes construction-based 3D printing will bring the real change. It can help make that sector cheaper and also efficient.All this sounds good on paper, but when reality hits, it takes a lot of time, efforts and there will always be an uncertainty of the final product. Remember, Google's contact lenses that measure glucose levels in diabetics by analysing their tears and were to make way into the market by 2019. Some experts now say it is all hype and could never make it to the market. Health and medicine publication Stat, adds that former employees aren’t even sure if it will ever see the light of day. Well, it doesn't stop here. Remember the wrist band that can detect cancer? Well, the report cites an expert calling it ‘science fiction’ and nothing short of fantasy. Interestingly, at the event, Schmidt spent considerable amount of the stage time talking about healthcare and related research.[caption id="attachment_227398" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Google Smart contact lens[/caption]It also reminds us about Nest, controversy-ridden, falling empire that Google is trying to resurrect with a new CEO, and hopefully a employee-friendly CEO. Nest was touted to be the future, and IoT truly is, but Nest failed miserably to build a new product under the leadership of Tony Fadell and was tagged as a loss-making company.The only project that seems to be making some consistent progress, going by the reports, is self-driving cars. Recently, Google taught the cars how and when to honk in order to alert other drivers. Schmidt said that the driverless car tech is ready to hit public roads, but is being held back by regulation. However, this is one technology that could could be some years away. Another could be advanced search.Alphabet is spending some time at doing what it does best – search. Google has an AI system that its plans to build inside Allo messaging (read here to know more about Allo). It will make suggestions to its users. Alphabet plans to expand it to an array of other products, which reportedly includes the YouTube service.While most of these project look good on paper, and some even close to becoming a reality, there are many others that are not. With a failed Google Glass, controversy ridden loss-making Nest and healthcare research being called science fantasy, is Google losing its sheen with these ambitious projects? Well, only time will tell.