[pg]

Depends exactly what you mean by it, but there do seem to be beneficial projects that are best organized as for-profit companies. For example, I doubt a nonprofit would have done as good a job at search or email as Google has.

I wrote about this phenomenon here: http://paulgraham.com/good.html

[loceng]

Being a not-for-profit company doesn't mean you can't generate revenue / profit and therefore be unable to pay for R&D; I suppose Google couldn't have IPO'd then to fundraise a large amount quickly, so there is that.. What Google had and was important though was a core technology and philosophy of the founders, who then with the additional money were able to take the time to develop and evolve a solid company direction and culture.