[flinty]

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Short(shorter than usualy for Google) term financial motives kill any far fetched ideas from ever having a chance. Wall Street demands up and to the right movement every 3 months. Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple try to have their own internal cadence of some goals in 3-5 years. Google had 10+ year projects but from the sounds of this article and what has been happening in the past year or so that leash is being shortened drastically. Sad day but I guess every company has to eventually grow up. Maybe another contender will emerge for long range innovation.