The company claimed it had built a machine that can perform in 200 seconds a calculation that would take the world’s current most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years. But the paper making the claim was taken down shortly after being posted on NASA’s website. (Financial Times)

Talking point: The paper was apparently not meant for public release, and Google has not commented on it since its publication. It would mark the first time anyone has claimed to have achieved“quantum supremacy,” a milestone whereby a quantum machine performs a calculation that exceeds the capacity of the most powerful traditional computer. Google, which partnered with NASA to work on quantum computing in 2018, has been one of many firms—including Microsoft, Accenture, Baidu, and IBM—racing to achieve a quantum breakthrough. But Dario Gil, IBM’s head of research, said Google’s test was too specific and devoid of practical use to herald a new era of computing, dismissing the paper’s claim as “grandiosity.”