A lot of research comes out of universities, where it gets publicized because people want their research funded. Google's contact lens project for example, ori

A lot of research comes out of universities, where it gets publicized because people want their research funded. Google's contact lens project for example, originally came out the University of Washington and Microsoft Research got publicity from it before it switched to Google. In fact, Microsoft Research still features the project: Medical Sensing via a Contact Lens (1) This kind of thing is not a problem if you present it as blue-sky research. It can become a problem if reporters think you're moving from research to commercialization because then they expect a product launch. Google's car came out of Stanford University's AI Lab. Google took it over after Stanford's car won $2 million in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge competition (2). Again, it was great publicity for Stanford as a winning AI project, but it's a potential disaster for Google if it never turns into a good product. Most of the major car manufacturers were, of course, doing similar research work, but generally keeping it fairly quiet.... (1) https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/researchconnections/science/stories/functional-lens.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/researchconnections/science/... (2) http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/october12/stanleyfinish-100905.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/october12/stanleyfinish-1...