Google has launched a healthcare company to attack some of the most difficult scientific problems in diseases related to ageing, marking the biggest step yet beyond its core internet business.

Larry Page, chief executive, unveiled the venture, called Calico, with a characteristically ambitious and vague claim that “with some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives”…

The new venture is to be headed by Art Levinson, the chairman of biotech company Genentech, which was bought by Roche in 2009. Mr Levinson is also the chairman of arch-rival Apple, as well as a former Google director, a role he had to abandon during a US antitrust investigation of overlapping directorships at a number of Silicon Valley companies.