That is not encouraging for challenging aging.
This post, based on this model suggests that mortality rate is doubling every 8 years or so (I think it was discussed on LW and written up on gwern.net before), possibly due to the linear decline in the immune system function with age. Thus finding a way to keep the immune system ship-shape could make a drastic difference in life expectancy.
(I think it was discussed on LW and written up on gwern.net before)
No, just LW: http://lesswrong.com/lw/5qm/living_forever_is_hard_or_the_gompertz_curve/
As for the amyloidosis thing - it's interesting but the sample is very small and I don't understand why Coles thinks there may be causality rather than him just finding a random biomarker correlate (none of his GRG emails help here either).
I'm also a bit skeptical about claims of the centenarian death rates flattening out and ceasing to follow a Gompertz curve since this sort of dieback may be fitting the population better to the curve...
Google's announcement, Time magazine rather sensationalist headline.
In any case, it's nice to know that Google set its sights to "challenge ... aging and associated diseases". Apple's Tim Cook:
For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn’t have to be this way.
One more step towards "world optimization".