Title: What a smart city doesn’t neglect about food

Concept of smart city

Smart city: definition regarding technology and not also

Definition regarding some aspect as traffic, health, energy, waste management

a city harnesses its potential to maximize the social, economic and environmental benefits of its food system, contributing towards global food security and sustainability.

Food importance

food is primary

food as a pleasure

Methods

try to not throw away food

children and adults obesity desease

social and environmental impact

globalization

greenhouse gas emissions caused by a high number of kilometers that food does

Urban Food Production – Advanced urban agriculture systems integrated onto rooftops and façades of buildings efficiently deliver high-quality produce and help solve food security problem

Smart City Foods makes it easy for you to save some of your valuable time with a quick and easy to use online grocery shopping experience.

Save food, less waste of food

Andrea Segré di Last Minute Market

Solidariety, support

food at 0 km - km 0 sustainable cusine

Slow Food movement

try to not throw away food

children and adults obesity desease

social and environmental impact

globalization

greenhouse gas emissions caused by a high number of kilometers that food does

Smart City at the center of a new relationship between local and global 

food:  essential pillar of sustainable cities

creativity for growing food and allecvare bestiame in piccoli spas

alleva pesci e coltiva verdure senza terra, sfruttando vicendevolmente gli scarti delle due attività: i pesci fertilizzano l'acqua delle piante, che a loro volta la mantengono limpida e ossigenata

IoT - Internet of Things

 IoT could be useful for tracking consumables from their point of origin through processing
and distribution to check quality and perishability

Sites

http://www.foodsmartcity.org/

http://web.mit.edu/professional/short-programs/courses/beyond_smart_cities.html

https://smartcityfoods.com/

http://www.smartfood.bio/

http://www.lastminutemarket.it/

http://www.delicooks.com/en/eco/km-0-sustainable-cusine

http://www.smartcityexhibition.it/en/food-cities-smart-future-urban-food-policies

http://life.wired.it/specialesmartcity/2012/07/11/citta-orto-il-fenomeno-del-nuovo-millennio.html

Difference from a paper article

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This is my "How to?" presentation for the English Class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNc8LMckwE

 

A smart city must consider food management as an essential pillar for pursuing its goal to be smart. In fact, even if there are many different definitions of the smart city idea, each explanation agrees stating that technology must be at the service of the city for a better citizens’ way of life, improving the management of waste, water and mobility, saving energy reserves, aiming at health care, enhancing economy and social life. Food is related with each of the above enhancing aspects, so smart technology should be used in every phase of food cycle: production, processing, and delivering.

First of all, a smart vegetable growing and animal breeding can save water and energy reserve, making sustainable the environmental impact. For example we can avoid pollution and preserve environment through recycling irrigation system and exploiting alternative energy resources, while advanced urban agriculture systems integrated onto rooftops and facades of building can efficiently deliver high quality produce and help to solve food security problem.

Furthermore, a smart traceability guarantees healthier food, reducing the danger caused by the introduction of processing chemicals and shortening the number of step  for transformation. Thanks to an effective traceability we can have a better quality of food and can control freshness, tracking consumables to check quality and perishability during all the processing and distribution steps. In addition, thanks to traceability the market can offer a bigger amount and variety of organic food, that can be cheaper and more available.

Moreover, a smart delivery of food diminishes traffic, saves energy and produces less waste. Smart delivery, in fact, aims at “km 0 food”: local, in-season edibles do not travel long distance for reach us, avoiding the increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to a high number of kilometers done by food. Besides, organic and other forms of low-input farming that use minimal or no pesticides and fertilizers – which are energy intensive in their manufacture – consume up to 40% less energy, and support higher levels of wildlife on farms. Smart delivery means also to reduce the food waste problem through an effective distribution, for lowering the costs associated with assortment management from the standpoint of sustainable local growth and solidarity. As it is shown by the Last Minute Market experience, an innovative service born in Bologna (Italy) as an academic spin-off,  getting the best out of waste rather than merely eliminating it makes the transformation of waste into resources possible, recovering excess food in favor of agencies and associations that assist needy people.

In conclusion, all the smart city services are related with food and food management, at every step of the food production chain, from growing the plants we harvest or raising the animals, through the processing, to the distribution. Thus, a smart city must consider food-relating services as a wide opportunity for enhancing the citizens’ quality of life, exploiting technology for improving its smartness.

http://prezi.com/embed/pbmdlpvrklz1/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&features=undefined&token=undefined&disabled_features=undefined TWO very shabby looking young men stood at the corner of Prairie avenue and Eightieth street, looking despondently at the carriages (carrozze) that whirled by (che  giravano vorticosamente). It was Christmas Eve, and the streets were full of vehicles; florists' wagons, grocers' carts and carriages. The streets were in that half-liquid, half-congealed condition peculiar to the streets of Chicago at that season of the year. The swift (rapide) wheels that spun (to spin/spun/spun = girare) by sometimes threw the slush of mud and snow over the two young men who were talking on the corner. "Well," remarked the elder of the two, "I guess we are at our rope's end, (= siamo al limite) sure enough. How do you feel?" "Pretty shaky (tremolante). The wind's sharp to-night. If I had had anything to eat I mightn't mind it so much. There is simply no show. I'm sick of the whole business. Looks like there's nothing for it but the lake." "O, nonsense, I thought you had more grit (=coraggio). Got anything left you can hoc (=impegnare)?" "Nothing but my beard, and I am afraid they wouldn't find it worth a pawn (di pagamento) ticket," said the younger man ruefully (=mestamente), rubbing the week's growth of stubble (barba ispida di un giorno) on his face. "Got any folks anywhere? Now's your time to strike 'em if you have." "Never mind if I have, they're out of the question."

"Well, you'll be out of it before many hours if you don't make a move of some sort. A man's got to eat. See here, I am going down to Longtin's saloon. I used to play the banjo in there with a couple of coons (=negri, slang), and I'll bone (=fregare) him for some of his free lunch stuff. You'd better come along, perhaps they'll fill an order for two." "How far down is it?" "Well, it's clear down town, of course, way down on Michigan avenue." "Thanks, I guess I'll loaf (=biglellonerò) around here. I don't feel equal to the walk, and the cars—well, the cars are crowded." His features drew themselves into what might have been a smile under happier circumstances. "No, you never did like street cars, you're too aristocratic. See here, Crawford, I don't like leaving you here. You ain't good company for yourself tonight." "Crawford? O, yes, that's the last one. There have been so many I forget them." "Have you got a real name, anyway?" "O, yes, but it's one of the ones I've forgotten. Don't you worry about me. You go along and get your free lunch. I think I had a row in Longtin's place once. I'd better not show myself there again." As he spoke the young man nodded and turned slowly up the avenue. He was miserable enough to want to be quite alone. Even the crowd that jostled by (= spingere) him annoyed him. He wanted to think about himself. He had avoided this final reckoning (calcolo) with himself for a year now. He had laughed it off and drunk it off. But now, when all those artificial devices which are employed to turn our thoughts into other channels and shield us from ourselves had failed him, it must come. Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection. It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition. To-night, as this man stood stranded in the streets of the city, his hour came. It was not the first time he had been hungry and desperate and alone. But always before there had been some outlook, some chance ahead, some pleasure yet untasted that seemed worth the effort, some face that he fancied was, or would be, dear. But it was not so tonight. The unyielding (=intransigente) conviction was upon him that he had failed in everything, had outlived everything. It had been near him for a long time, that Pale Spectre. He had caught its shadow at the bottom of his glass many a time, at the head of his bed when he was sleepless at night, in the twilight shadows when some great sunset broke upon him. It had made life hateful to him when he awoke in the morning before now. But now it settled slowly over him, like night, the endless Northern nights that bid the sun a long farewell. It rose up before him like granite. From this brilliant city with its glad bustle of Yule-tide he was shut off as completely as though he were a creature of another species. His days seemed numbered and done, sealed over like the little coral cells at the bottom of the sea. Involuntarily he drew that cold air through his lungs slowly, as though he were tasting it for the last time. Yet he was but four and twenty, this man—he looked even younger—and he had a father some place down East who had been very proud of him once. Well, he had taken his life into his own hands, and this was what he had made of it. That was all there was to be said. He could remember the hopeful things they used to say about him at college in the old days, before he had cut away and begun to live by his wits, and he found courage to smile at them now. They had read him wrongly. He knew now that he never had the essentials of success, only the superficial agility that is often mistaken for it. He was tow without the tinder, and he had burnt himself out at other people's fires. He had helped other people to make it win, but he himself—he had never touched an enterprise that had not failed eventually. Or, if it survived his connection with it, it left him behind. His last venture had been with some ten-cent specialty company, a little lower than all the others, that had gone to pieces in Buffalo, and he had worked his way to Chicago by boat. When the boat made up its crew for the outward voyage, he was dispensed with as usual. He was used to that. The reason for it? O, there are so many reasons for failure! His was a very common one. As he stood there in the wet under the street light he drew up his reckoning with the world and decided that it had treated him as well as he deserved. He had overdrawn his account once too often. There had been a day when he thought otherwise; when he had said he was unjustly handled, that his failure was merely the lack of proper adjustment between himself and other men, that some day he would be recognized and it would all come right. But he knew better than that now, and he was still man enough to bear no grudge against any one—man or woman. To-night was his birthday, too. There seemed something particularly amusing in that. He turned up a limp little coat collar to try to keep a little of the wet chill from his throat, and instinctively began to remember all the birthday parties he used to have. He was so cold and empty that his mind seemed unable to grapple with any serious question. He kept thinking about ginger bread and frosted cakes like a child. He could remember the splendid birthday parties his mother used to give him, when all the other little boys in the block came in their Sunday clothes and creaking shoes, with their ears still red from their mother's towel, and the pink and white birthday cake, and the stuffed olives and all the dishes of which he had been particularly fond, and how he would eat and eat and then go to bed and dream of Santa Claus. And in the morning he would awaken and eat again, until by night the family doctor arrived with his castor oil, and poor William used to dolefully say that it was altogether too much to have your birthday and Christmas all at once. He could remember, too, the royal birthday suppers he had given at college, and the stag dinners, and the toasts, and the music, and the good fellows who had wished him happiness and really meant what they said. And since then there were other birthday suppers that he could not remember so clearly; the memory of them was heavy and flat, like cigarette smoke that has been shut in a room all night, like champagne that has been a day opened, a song that has been too often sung, an acute sensation that has been overstrained. They seemed tawdry and garish, discordant to him now. He rather wished he could forget them altogether. Whichever way his mind now turned there was one thought that it could not escape, and that was the idea of food. He caught the scent of a cigar suddenly, and felt a sharp pain in the pit of his abdomen and a sudden moisture in his mouth. His cold hands clenched angrily, and for a moment he felt that bitter hatred of wealth, of ease, of everything that is well-fed and well-housed that is common to starving men. At any rate he had a right to eat! He had demanded great things from the world once: fame and wealth and admiration. Now it was simply bread—and he would have it! He looked about him quickly and felt the blood begin to stir in his veins. In all his straits he had never stolen anything, his tastes were above it. But to-night there would be no to-morrow. He was amused at the way in which the idea excited him. Was it possible there was yet one more experience that would distract him, one thing that had power to excite his jaded interest? Good! he had failed at everything else, now he would see what his chances would be as a common thief. It would be amusing to watch the beautiful consistency of his destiny work itself out even in that role. It would be interesting to add another study to his gallery of futile attempts, and then label them all: "the failure as a journalist," "the failure as a lecturer," "the failure as a business man," "the failure as a thief," and so on, like the titles under the pictures of the Dance of Death. It was time that Childe Roland came to the dark tower. A girl hastened by him with her arms full of packages. She walked quickly and nervously, keeping well within the shadow, as if she were not accustomed to carrying bundles and did not care to meet any of her friends. As she crossed the muddy street, she made an effort to lift her skirt a little, and as she did so one of the packages slipped unnoticed from beneath her arm. He caught it up and overtook her. "Excuse me, but I think you dropped something." She started, "O, yes, thank you, I would rather have lost anything than that." The young man turned angrily uponView Image of Page 9himself. The package must have contained something of value. Why had he not kept it? Was this the sort of thief he would make? He ground his teeth together. There is nothing more maddening than to have morally consented to crime and then lack the nerve force to carry it out. A carriage drove up to the house before which he stood. Several richly dressed women alighted and went in. It was a new house, and must have been built since he was in Chicago last. The front door was open and he could see down the hall-way and up the stair case. The servant had left the door and gone with the guests. The first floor was brilliantly lighted, but the windows upstairs were dark. It looked very easy, just to slip upstairs to the darkened chambers where the jewels and trinkets of the fashionable occupants were kept. Still burning with impatience against himself he entered quickly. Instinctively he removed his mud-stained hat as he passed quickly and quietly up the stair case. It struck him as being a rather superfluous courtesy in a burglar, but he had done it before he had thought. His way was clear enough, he met no one on the stairway or in the upper hall. The gas was lit in the upper hall. He passed the first chamber door through sheer cowardice. The second he entered quickly, thinking of something else lest his courage should fail him, and closed the door behind him. The light from the hall shone into the room through the transom. The apartment was furnished richly enough to justify his expectations. He went at once to the dressing case. A number of rings and small trinkets lay in a silver tray. These he put hastily in his pocket. He opened the upper drawer and found, as he expected, several leather cases. In the first he opened was a lady's watch, in the second a pair of old-fashioned bracelets; he seemed to dimly remember having seen bracelets like them before, somewhere. The third case was heavier, the spring was much worn, and it opened easily. It held a cup of some kind. He held it up to the light and then his strained nerves gave way and he uttered a sharp exclamation. It was the silver mug he used to drink from when he was a little boy. The door opened, and a woman stood in the doorway facing him. She was a tall An illustration of a man seen from behind who is standing next to the open drawers of a dressing case and a woman in evening dress entering through the doorway. THE DOOR OPENED AND A WOMAN STOOD IN THE DOORWAY FACING HIM. SHE WAS A TALL WOMAN WITH WHITE HAIR IN EVENING DRESS.woman, with white hair, in evening dress. The light from the hall streamed in upon him, but she was not afraid. She stood looking at him a moment, then she threw out her hand and went quickly toward him. "Willie, Willie! Is it you!" He struggled to loose her arms from him, to keep her lips from his cheek. "Mother—you must not! You do not understand! O, my God, this is worst of all!" Hunger, weakness, cold, shame, all came back to him, and shook his self-control completely. Physically he was too weak to stand a shock like this. Why could it not have been an ordinary discovery, arrest, the station house and all the rest of it. Anything but this! A hard dry sob broke from him. Again he strove to disengage himself. "Who is it says I shall not kiss my son? O, my boy, we have waited so long for this! You have been so long in coming, even I almost gave you up." Her lips upon his cheek burnt him like fire. He put his hand to his throat, and spoke thickly and incoherently: "You do not understand. I did not know you were here. I came here to rob—it is the first time—I swear it—but I am a common thief. My pockets are full of your jewels now. Can't you hear me? I am a common thief!" "Hush, my boy, those are ugly words. How could you rob your own house? How could you take what is your own? They are all yours, my son, as wholly yours as my great love—and you can't doubt that, Will, do you?" That soft voice, the warmth and fragrance of her person stole through his chill, empty veins like a gentle stimulant. He felt as though all his strength were leaving him and even consciousness. He held fast to her and bowed his head on her strong shoulder, and groaned aloud. "O, mother, life is hard, hard!" She said nothing, but held him closer. And O, the strength of those white arms that held him! O, the assurance of safety in that warm bosom that rose and fell under his cheek! For a moment they stood so, silently. Then they heard a heavy step upon the stair. She led him to a chair and went out and closed the door. At the top of the staircase she met a tall, broad-shouldered man, with iron gray hair, and a face alert and stern. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks on fire, her whole face was one expression of intense determination. "James, it is William in there, come home. You must keep him at any cost. If he goes this time, I go with him. O, James, be easy with him, he has suffered so." She broke from a command to an entreaty, and laid her hand on his shoulder. He looked questioningly at her a moment, then went in the room and quietly shut the door. She stood leaning against the wall, clasping her temples with her hands and listening to the low indistinct sound of the voices within. Her own lips moved silently. She waited a long time, scarcely breathing. At last the door opened, and her husband came out. He stopped to say in a shaken voice, "You go to him now, he will stay. I will go to my room. I will see him again in the morning." She put her arm about his neck, "O, James, I thank you, I thank you! This is the night he came so long ago, you remember? I gave him to you then, and now you give him back to me!" "Don't, Helen," he muttered. "He is my son, I have never forgotten that. I failed with him. I don't like to fail, it cuts my pride. Take him and make a man of him." He passed on down the hall. She flew into the room where the young man sat with his head bowed upon his knee. She dropped upon her knees beside him. Ah, it was so good to him to feel those arms again! "He is so glad, Willie, so glad! He may not show it, but he is as happy as I. He never was demonstrative with either of us, you know." "O, my God, he was good enough," groaned the man. "I told him everything, and he was good enough. I don't see how either of you can look at me, speak to me, touch me." He shivered under her clasp again as when she had first touched him, and tried weakly to throw her off. But she whispered softly, View Image of Page 10 "This is my right, my son." Presently, when he was calmer, she rose. "Now, come with me into the library, and I will have your dinner brought there." As they went down stairs she remarked apologetically, "I will not call Ellen to-night; she has a number of guests to attend to. She is a big girl now, you know, and came out last winter. Besides, I want you all to myself to-night." When the dinner came, and it came very soon, he fell upon it savagely. As he ate she told him all that had transpired during the years of his absence, and how his father's business had brought them there. "I was glad when we came. I thought you would drift West. I seemed a good deal nearer to you here." There was a gentle unobtrusive sadness in her tone that was too soft for a reproach. "Have you everything you want? It is a comfort to see you eat." He smiled grimly, "It is certainly a comfort to me. I have not indulged in this frivolous habit for some thirty-five hours." She caught his hand and pressed it sharply, uttering a quick remonstrance. "Don't say that! I know, but I can't hear you say it,—it's too terrible! My boy, food has choked me many a time when I have thought of the possibility of that. Now take the old lounging chair by the fire, and if you are too tired to talk, we will just sit and rest together." He sank into the depths of the big leather chair with the lion's heads on the arms, where he had sat so often in the days when his feet did not touch the floor and he was half afraid of the grim monsters cut in the polished wood. That chair seemed to speak to him of things long forgotten. It was like the touch of an old familiar friend. He felt a sudden yearning tenderness for the happy little boy who had sat there and dreamed of the big world so long ago. Alas, he had been dead many a summer, that little boy! He sat looking up at the magnificent woman beside him. He had almost forgotten how handsome she was; how lustrous and sad were the eyes that were set under that serene brow, how impetuous and wayward the mouth even now, how superb the white throat and shoulders! Ah, the wit and grace and fineness of this woman! He remembered how proud he had been of her as a boy when she came to see him at school. Then in the deep red coals of the grate he saw the faces of other women who had come since then into his vexed, disordered life. Laughing faces, with eyes artificially bright, eyes without depth or meaning, features without the stamp of high sensibilities. And he had left this face for such as those! He sighed restlessly and laid his hand on hers. There seemed refuge and protection in the touch of her, as in the old days when he was afraid of the dark. He had been in the dark so long now, his confidence was so thoroughly shaken, and he was bitterly afraid of the night and of himself. "Ah, mother, you make other things seem so false. You must feel that I owe you an explanation, but I can't make any, even to myself. Ah, but we make poor exchanges in life. I can't make out the riddle of it all. Yet there are things I ought to tell you before I accept your confidence like this." "I'd rather you wouldn't, Will. Listen: Between you and me there can be no secrets. We are more alike than other people. Dear boy, I know all about it. I am a woman, and circumstances were different with me, but we are of one blood. I have lived all your life before you. You have never had an impulse that I have not known, you have never touched a brink that my feet have not trod. This is your birthday night. Twenty-four years ago I foresaw all this. I was a young woman then and I had hot battles of my own, and I felt your likeness to me. You were not like other babies. From the hour you were born you were restless and discontented, as I had been before you. You used to brace your strong little limbs against mine and try to throw me off as you did to-night. To-night you have come back to me, just as you always did after you ran away to swim in the river that was forbidden you, the river you loved because it was forbidden. You are tired and sleepy, just as you used to be then, only a little older and a little paler and a little more foolish. I never asked you where you had been then, nor will I now. You have come back to me, that's all in all to me. I know your every possibility and limitation, as a composer knows his instrument." He found no answer that was worthy to give to talk like this. He had not found life easy since he had lived by his wits. He had come to know poverty at close quarters. He had known what it was to be gay with an empty pocket, to wear violets in his button hole when he had not breakfasted, and all the hateful shams of the poverty of idleness. He had been a reporter on a big metropolitan daily, where men grind out their brains on paper until they have not one idea left—and still grind on. He had worked in a real estate office, where ignorant men were swindled. He had sung in a comic opera chorus and played Harris in an Uncle Tom's Cabin Company, and edited a Socialist weekly. He had been dogged by debt and hunger and grinding poverty, until to sit here by a warm fire without concern as to how it would be paid for seemed unnatural. He looked up at her questioningly. "I wonder if you know how much you pardon?" "O, my poor boy, much or little, what does it matter? Have you wandered so far and paid such a bitter price for knowledge and not yet learned that love has nothing to do with pardon or forgiveness, that it only loves, and loves—and loves? They have not taught you well, the women of your world." She leaned over and kissed him, as no woman had kissed him since he left her. He drew a long sigh of rich content. The old life, with all its bitterness and useless antagonism and flimsy sophistries, its brief delights that were always tinged with fear and distrust and unfaith, that whole miserable, futile, swindled world of Bohemia seemed immeasurably distant and far away, like a dream that is over and done. And as the chimes rang joyfully outside and sleep pressed heavily upon his eyelids, he wondered dimly if the Author of this sad little riddle of ours were not able to solve it after all, and if the Potter would not finally mete out his all comprehensive justice, such as none but he could have, to his Things of Clay, which are made in his own patterns, weak or strong, for his own ends; and if some day we will not awaken and find that all evil is a dream, a mental distortion that will pass when the dawn shall break.

Sorgente: Sundar Pichai Just Inherited the Most High-Pressure Job at Alphabet | WIRED By Jessi Hempel, www.wired.com August 11, 2015 Larry Page has lofty1 goals for Alphabet. The new holding company was established to morph the search engine he and Sergey Brin founded in 1998 into a platform to technocharge the entire world. Self-driving cars! Glucose-monitoring contact lenses! Drone delivery! Longer human life! As he has done all along, Page will continue to plow2 resources into these endeavors, the moonshots3. Most of that funding, however, will come from advertising, the business that made (the company formerly known as) Google a giant in the first place.

Which means that Sundar Pichai has just assumed Alphabet’s most high-pressure4 job. As CEO of the new Google, which is now a subsidiary of Alphabet, he’ll be responsible for keeping Google’s core business the well-oiled cash machine it has long been, even as it faces increasingly nimble5 competitors.

The scope of this challenge is tremendous. Google brought in \(66 billion in revenue last year, and 89 percent of that came from display and mobile advertising. For Google to maintain that growth rate again this year, it will need to build new business the size of a mid-tier Fortune 500 company like Whole Foods (2014 revenue: \)14.2 billion), and most of that will come from advertising.

Pichai inherits a healthy business, and one that he has mostly been running for awhile6. Google remains a fast growing company, with plenty of opportunity ahead. The company beat expectations in its most recent earnings report, and new CFO Ruth Porat credited “core search, where mobile stood out5, as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising.”

But there is incredible pressure for Google to keep the growth up even as the advertising landscape shifts rapidly from desktop to mobile, upending6 the economics of the business. Like every tech company, Google must contend with the fact that people are spending more time on their phones. Mobile searches now outnumber7 those on desktops. As a result, the industry has seen a decline in “cost per click,” the amount of money companies are paid when we click on ads. Although she was frustratingly short on details for Wall Street’s taste, Porat offered the good news that the trend is slowing. She said the price gap between mobile and desktop is closing and desktop ad prices currently remain steady. But Google will see more competition on mobile devices as a slew of8 companies are trying to capture advertising dollars.

Everyone After Google

Beyond this, Google is facing product competition everywhere. As my colleague Julia Greenberg writes, Facebook has moved aggressively into online video, aiming squarely8 for Google’s YouTube business. The social giant is pushing hard into Google’s territory on all fronts, from in-app search to Facebook’s Messenger app, which has become a complement to Gmail. Then there’s Amazon. As Eric Schmidt noted in a Berlin speech last October, Amazon is among Google’s biggest competitors in search: if Internet shoppers begin their shopping on Amazon, instead of Googling (often just to get to Amazon) their shopping interests, Google will lose out8.

Pichai has the track record to navigate the challenge ahead. He joined Google in 2004 after completing a masters in material sciences and engineering from Stanford, an MBA from Wharton, and taking a bit of time along the way to work at Applied Materials and McKinsey. Nearly a decade ago, he argued forcefully for Chrome’s development, seeing concern ahead that Microsoft could modify Internet Explorer, the dominant search engine of the time, to make it more difficult for users to install the toolbar that made Google the default search engine. (If you’re reading this from a desktop, chances are that you are on a Chrome browser.) As Pichai rose at Google, he was given oversight9 of Google’s apps—Gmail, Calendar, etc—and became part of the company’s leadership team, reporting to Page. When Andy Rubin left Android to work on a secret robotics project, Page handed Android over10 to Pichai. Last October, in a move that was almost certainly preparing the company for its most recent restructuring, Page put Pichai in charge of most of Google’s enterprise, adding to his roster10 products like search, maps, and commerce.

A tall man with a pronounced slouch10 and a thick Indian lilt11 to his speech, Pichai combines a high IQ—he finished top of his class at India’s prestigious IIT and got a full scholarship to Stanford—with a reputation as a highly personable guy. When he was promoted last fall, venture capitalist Om Malik tweeted: “Proof nice guys can win.” Shortly after the news broke, I spoke with Bret Taylor, founder and CEO of enterprise software company Quip, who had worked with him at Google. “He has an incredibly strong EQ,” Taylor told me. “Some of the strongest I’ve seen.”

He’ll need these skills to keep the company’s primary sales engine running, enabling Alphabet to make good on its moonshots. Cars may drive themselves at the Googleplex, but companies will not.

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[wpanchor id="traduzione"]Traduzione termini

lofty = nobile, elevato (agg.). Es. lofty goals

plow(US) = plough(BR); plow [something] into [something] = investire (money). Es plow resources into these endeavors (= imprese, tentativi)

moonshot (fig.) = idea avventurosa

high-pressure = stressante

nimble = agile, sveglio. Es. nimble competitors

awhile = per un po'

to stand out = risaltare, spiccare

upend = capovolgere

outnumber = essere più numeroso di. Es. mobil searches outnumbers those on desktops

a slew of = un mucchio di

squarely = onestamente, francamente, esattamente

to lose out = perdere l'occasione, rimetterci

oversight = controllo, supervisione

hand [something] over = trasferire, cedere

roster = lista, elenco

sloutch = andatura dinoccolata. Es. a pronounced sloutch

lilt = cadenza (nella pronuncia) Es. a thick Indian lilt

personable = gradevole. Es. a high personable guy