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FTA: "Dr. Raibert has said in the past that he does not consider his company to be a military contractor — it is merely trying to advance robotics technology.

FTA: "Dr. Raibert has said in the past that he does not consider his company to be a military contractor — it is merely trying to advance robotics technology. Google executives said the company would honor existing military contracts, but that it did not plan to move toward becoming a military contractor on its own."

sneak 13y ago
If one is working on military contracts, then one is a military contractor. If they are owned by Google and Google honors those contracts, then this is the day that Google publicly became a military contractor.
- huherto 13y ago
  Or they will direct their talents not to the military any more (after honoring existing contracts) to other more non-violent applications.
  - timdev2 13y ago
    One can only hope. That was my fantasy upon reading the headline: "Google acquires and renders harmless army of kill-bots" Sadly, I'm afraid it was a dream.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  If they didn't buy the company, they would have to honor the contracts anyways. If they break the contract presumably they will have to face consequences, possibly paying money to DARPA so some other company can do it. Besides not everyone believes DARPA is "evil".
- konstruktor 13y ago
  There are two sides to this story. The one I consider almost insignificant is that by honouring existing contracts, they have become a defence contractor in the literal sense. The more important one is that by not doing new work for the military, they have just remove one of the hottest companies from the defence market. I wonder whether the US government has ways of withholding regulatory approval of this deal because of this.