[_bxg1]

> Nice thing to do

I don't believe Google does anything because it's a "nice thing to do". There's some angle here. The angle could just be spurring general innovation in this area, which they'll benefit from indirectly down the line, but in one way or another this plays to their interests.

[sangnoir]

> I don't believe Google does anything because it's a "nice thing to do".

If only Google had this singular focus... From my external (and lay) observation - some Google departments will indulge senior engineers and let them work on their pet projects, even when the projects are only tangentially related to current focus areas.

Looking at Google org on Github (https://github.com/google); it might be a failure of imagination on my part, but I fail to see an "angle" on a good chunk of them.

[sixothree]

Google has never created a product that does not collect data in a unique manner apart from its other products.

[ladyanita22]

They must be some kind of genius. I don't see how are they going to be able to extract personal information out of here.

[sixothree]

They're not doing this out of the kindness of their heart. Just because we don't know the data being collected here (yet) does not invalidate my statement. Name a google product and you can easily identify the unique data being collected.

[emiliobumachar]

Not necessarily personal. Maybe training a robot to design circuits?