[skybrian]

This is a reductive generalization, sort of like assuming people at Bell Labs were working on telephone equipment, or people at Xerox PARC were working on copiers. How a company makes its money isn't what determines the biggest impact of its research. In the end, it may be some other research area that they never figure out how to make money on at all.

Google famously has lots of "moonshots" and publishes lots of research and open source code. It's too soon to say what's going to turn out to be a real advance versus an "illusion".

[throwaway2048]

what google calls "moonshots" is a pathetic joke compared to the real thing.

They called 15 million dollars in cancer research investment a "moonshot", as well as the various absurdly low x prizes (vs what they are asking for, and ONLY IF you succeed).