The video, published to YouTube on Feb. 23, was awe-inspiring and scary. A two-legged humanoid robot trudges through the snow, somehow maintaining its balance. Another robot with two arms and pads for hands crouches down and lifts a brown box and delicately places it on a shelf -- then somehow stays upright while a human tries to push it over with a hockey stick. A third robot topples over and clambers back to its feet with ease.

Tens of millions of people viewed the video over the next few weeks. Google and the division responsible for the video, Boston Dynamics, were seemingly pushing the frontier in robot technology.

But behind the scenes a more pedestrian drama was playing out. Executives at Google parent Alphabet Inc., absorbed with making sure all the various companies under its corporate umbrella have plans to generate real revenue, concluded that Boston Dynamics isn’t likely to produce a marketable product in the next few years and have put the unit up for sale, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.

Possible acquirers include the Toyota Research Institute, a division of Toyota Motor Corp., and Amazon.com Inc., which makes robots for its fulfillment centers, according to one person. Google and Toyota declined to comment, and Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Google acquired Boston Dynamics in late 2013 as part of a spree of acquisitions in the field of robotics. The deals were spearheaded by Andy Rubin, former chief of the Android division, and brought about 300 robotics engineers into Google. Rubin left the company in October 2014. Over the following year, the robot initiative, dubbed Replicant, was plagued by leadership changes, failures to collaborate between companies and an unsuccessful effort to recruit a new leader.

At the heart of Replicant’s trouble, said a person familiar with the group, was a reluctance by Boston Dynamics executives to work with Google’s other robot engineers in California and Tokyo and the unit’s failure to come up with products that could be released in the near term.

David Fuller's view

I am sorry to see this because Boston Dynamics had plenty of talent and Google supplied development cash for their projects.  However, the problem appears to be one of management.  Why was Boston Dynamics making machines which could replicate human or animal movement? They were too much like scary terminator machines, fortunately without the weapons, and too reminiscent of Star Wars’ cute machines.  In other words, they were expensive toys, impressive but with limited practical value.

We seldom see the most useful robotics, which are often intelligent software in the remarkable machines which many of us use every day, from smart phones to laptops and automobiles.  Industrial robots made by Fanuc and several other companies have no humanoid characteristics, but they can be programmed for the assembly line production of automobiles and other complex, mass produced machines.  In comparison, Boston Dynamics appears not to have found or been assigned its commercial niche.