[sks]

You are correct that "The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money" and with driverless cars and google glasses the CEO is doing exactly that.

Also people working on these projects are scientists at googleX they are completely different from the Android team ... Google has enough resources (people and money) to pursue these long term research project without hurting their short term business too much.

[repsilat]

> You are correct that "The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money"

Actually that's not strictly true. The CEO's job is to satisfy the shareholders/board of directors. Normally that coincides with making the company money, but not always - the idea of a legal duty to maximise share value is a widely held myth. In the case of Google, most of the shares are still held by the founders. If they just want the company to do cool and impractical things they have the right and the capacity to make it do so.