Maybe I'm way off, but I think this is kind of what Google intended in some sort of way with their Google X lab. They're exploring innovative and new ideas but

Maybe I'm way off, but I think this is kind of what Google intended in some sort of way with their Google X lab. They're exploring innovative and new ideas but I think it's with the intent of spurring on this competitive spirt with the other tech giants. One company exploring these ideas is innovative but may not make much progress; having a bunch of companies compete to come up with the best version of these ideas may make the progress on these technologies increase rapidly.