[sapote]

That's absolutely not the case. Government-funded research review processes are actually more prescriptive and restrictive and political than Google is. I know this first hand. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. Oddly, what ends up happening in a lot of government-funded research review systems is that those reviewing proposals are trying to guess "what kind of research would industry like to see?" so you get the worst of both worlds.

Also, Google is largely funding CS research -- this isn't the kind of thing where there's a double blind study going on. It's usually work on a new algorithm or protocol or architecture or ... -- things that are constructive engineering tasks that can be replicated by others when the researchers' papers are published.