Google’s Niantic Labs to become independent company

Two days after it announced a major organisational revamp, Google announced  that it would spin off its augmented reality unit Niantic Labs, into an independent company.

The spin off, rather unusual for the search company, meant that Niantic Labs would not be part of Alphabet, the new holding company that was expected to be formed later this year to include Google and other parts of the company.

Ninantic Labs announced the move in a Google+ post yesterday, which was confirmed by Winnie King, a spokeswoman for Google.

She added, with the split Niantic would be able to accelerate its growth, ''which will help them align more closely with investors and partners in the entertainment space,'' but didn't provide any more details.

According to Niantic, it would allow the company to work with new partners even as it continued to collaborate with Google.

The reorganisation, announced Monday, would see the company's businesses would restructure under a holding company called Alphabet (See: Google restructured under holding arm `Alphabet', Sundar Pichai made CEO).

The changes would see many of Google's core online services - like ads, maps and search remain in the company that will be called Google Inc, while other emerging businesses and advanced projects - like self-driving cars and internet-connected balloons - would become separate companies under Alphabet.

The split with Niantic suggested that Google might be looking to slim itself before the upcoming reorganisation.

Niantic Labs, is known for its massively multiplayer geocaching game Ingress, which was now it own, independent company, according to a post on Google+.

In Ingress people use their smartphone's positioning system to faux-hack real places around the world. For instance, two teams (that comprise all of the game's hundreds of thousands of players) aim to gain control of landmarks like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

Ingress and Niantic had earlier operated under the Google umbrella, but that would change forward.

''Niantic Labs is becoming an independent company,'' reads Niantic's announcement. ''We'll be taking our unique blend of exploration and fun to even bigger audiences with some amazing new partners joining Google as collaborators and backers.''

Niantic would therefore continue to work with Google but only as a collaborator.