What he neglects to realize is that projects officially supported by Google, first must gain recognition within the company itself. I don't think any of them th

What he neglects to realize is that projects officially supported by Google, first must gain recognition within the company itself. I don't think any of them think that Google has the same monetary issues as a startup, but they do have to convince people inside of Google to recognize their project, devote time to it (whether its their 20% or their actual job). Also, the idea that Googlers don't contribute anything new to the playing field is ridiculous. I think a simple browsing of http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html should be enough to refute that idea. While Google isn't exactly a startup, I think there are certainly analogies to be made.