Google is launching a new independent health and wellness company focused on the challenge of aging and associated diseases with former Genentech CEO Art Levinson as its CEO.

Levinson is also among the first investors in the new company dubbed Calico. He will continue to serve as chairman of Genentech and Apple and as a director of Hoffmann-La Roche, but says that Google CEO Larry Page’s “focus on outsized improvements” inspired him to become involved with Calico.

“Illness and aging affect all our families,” says Page. “With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives.”

Despite Google’s initial announcement and an article announcing the launch of Calico in Time, few details about the nature of the new venture or the initial investments made by Levinson and Google were available. However, Page made it clear in his Google Plus posting that it is small relative to Google’s core business.

“There’s tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people’s lives,” writes Page, in a posting on the company’s social network, Google Plus. “Don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses.”

Calico isn’t Google’s first venture into the healthcare space. Google launched Google Health, which offered people a personal medical records service, but shut it down in June 2011 after it failed to catch on the way the company had hoped. The company’s Google Ventures arm has also backed the personal genetics company 23andMe.

Regardless of what Google does, the company’s search business has alread earned an important spot in Americans’ quest for better health. Eight in ten online health queries started with a search engine, according to research conducted by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.