I used to work at BT Labs back in the day, there were very, very many smart engineers and scientists there. BT had a dismal track record of exploiting anything

I used to work at BT Labs back in the day, there were very, very many smart engineers and scientists there. BT had a dismal track record of exploiting anything Labs came up with, then again Labs were very bad at being relevant and selling themselves to the company. I could easily believe that Labs (and their predecessors) discovered the key ideas behind Google many years before they knew what to do with them.