[fermienrico]

I am currently reading "The Idea Factory" [1], the story of Bell Labs and its innovation streak for many decades. There were so many amazing things Bell Labs worked on - all directly related to solving business problems. At one point, they were given a task of developing the most perfect lubrication oil dispenser with a requirement that it dispenses exactly 15 drops of oil per squeeze of the trigger. They worked on Tractors that dug channels for laying telephone lines to materials that lead to the invention of the transistor to solve the problem of unreliability of vacuum tube based switch boards. Some worked on improving manufacturing and invented what we call Quality Control. Everything was deep and wide, but still tied to the Bell's business.

When I look at Google X and bunch of modern corporate labs (Lab 126, Facebook probably has something, Intel Labs (drones!), Microsoft Labs), I see a whole lotta hoo haa about tech innovation, but nothing with a long term vision of integration, capitalization and sustenance. No sense of practicality and pragmatism. May be Loon is a way to make Google an internet company (ISP), I could be wrong but as an outsider, it feels like a PR stunt than anything else.

Highly recommend this book.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American-Innovatio...

[kippinitreal]

The difference is that Bell scientists were always focused on core business problems and not just chasing fantasies. OK sure, Shannon was doing whatever with mice and unicycles...but he earned it! All of Bells big accomplishments were tightly coupled to business needs: Information theory => everything, transistors => bad vacuums, fiber optics => latency.

Similarly Google has had huge contributions on "research" focused on their core problems: MapReduce, BigTable, Borg, BERT, etc.

[mjfl]

I think another very important component was that they were innovating in an area where they had a legal monopoly - there was no risk that their competitors would steal away their inventions. This is not the case with Waymo for instance.

[someperson]

Facebook Reality Labs does VR and AR, eg the Oculus Quest. They innovate and develop great mass-market consumer hardware but they've started doing an awful job in every other respect (their family sharing model sucks compared to Steam). I'm looking forward to see them being disrupted by a real competitor soon.

[petra]

It seems that something like Loon is much more risky and large scale than those Bell Labs projects - which seem like regular r&d risks (although many of them).

And if it have worked reliably and affordably, they probably could have found some way to monetize it.

[renewiltord]

Lab 126 made Kindle. It's already done its job.

Oh, and Fire TV, and Echo.

Yeah, Lab 126 definitely did its job. Literally every product integrates is a core part of the Amazon experience.

[titanomachy]

Google already is an ISP... see Fi, Fiber. Loon isn’t so far outside their domain.