[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.