Google is the new Bell Labs

Google is Oak Ridge.<p>When I was growing up in Silicon Valley traffic was light, places were far, and there was nothing in between.<p>Silicon Valley was rarely the place you wanted to be, we all wanted out having been here our whole lives. We wanted New York, we wanted Los Angeles, we wanted anywhere but here.<p>Over the years that has changed.<p>You ask most people that work at Google the significance of the Googleplex and no one will ever tell you about the prominence, about how it used to the rolling valleys housed the SGI buildings.<p>But day in, day out, the buses flow. The cars flow. Once you&#x27;re on campus it&#x27;s a different world. Everyone&#x27;s busy, everyone has something important they&#x27;re insisting on doing.<p>The whole of Mountain View, and in turn the surrounding suburban sprawl has been turned into the tiny steams coursing into Oak Ridge.<p>The highways are jammed. The roads are jammed. There are more lines. There are more people. All eager to do something important. Meals are provided, the buses are provided, the interns get their limos to go to the local hotels<p>Slowly but surely, we got our wish. Los Angeles came to us. New York came to us.

Bell Labs invented fundamental technology like the transistor and the laser. I wouldn&#x27;t put Google Maps in that league. They did not invent autonomous vehicles or wearable computers, though they have made strides in commoditizing the technology.

I really don&#x27;t understand the Apple hate boner. Apple may have single handedly jump started the mobile industry, and is the godfather of huge apps like Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram , Snapchat, Uber, Square, Candy Crush, the last few that have been causing major problems for major incumbents.<p>Now what platforms has Google built that is changing the game for everyone else? You have YouTube and thats pretty much it. Android is a me-too product, Chromecase is a me-too product, Chrome is a me-too product. I won&#x27;t lie Maps, and Translate are amazing services but hardly worth deity status. Plus has been a spectacular flop, and my father (who isn&#x27;t in tune with tech) is completely confused as to why people by their cloud machines from Amazon.<p>Lastly, Google isn&#x27;t putting anything on the line. 95%+ of Google&#x27;s revenue is advertising. If Ford started work on an autonomous car that would be putting it on the line. What Google is doing is the equivalent of a rich kid buying fancy toys. Google X gets a lot of PR, but thus far it isn&#x27;t all that much different from Microsoft &amp; IBM Research.<p>I&#x27;m not going to say what Google is doing is wrong, I think its great actually. However we shouldn&#x27;t get ahead of ourselves by saying Apple is doing nothing. That company is focused on building amazing products on what pretty much amounts to yesterdays technology. Every phone today has a capacitive screen but how long has that been around? Retina displays? How long did we suffer with 1368x768 laptops?<p>So while Google is not reliving the 80s &quot;household of tomorrow&quot; pipe dream, It doesn&#x27;t seem wise to say Apple just builds &quot;only phones and tablets.&quot; given that those phones and tablets have been the center of current tech industry and are out <i>now</i> rather than &quot;just 5 more years!&quot;

I don&#x27;t get the Apple hate. And at the risk of getting downvoted, I&#x27;m gonna paraphrase Steve Jobs,<p><pre><code> We have to get out of our heads that for Google to win Apple has to loose. </code></pre> This idea that Apple only got right the timing, and that without them smartphones would be the same, computers would be the same and tablets would be the same seems crazy to me. Timing &lt;i&gt;IS&lt;&#x2F;i&gt; everything, and they made theirs by creating a lot of the technology we take for granted now. They drove the industry here, almost entirely by willpower. AT&amp;T helped them reluctantly, Verizon didn&#x27;t want anything to do with the iPhone (and I suspect they still don&#x27;t) and the music industry did&#x27;t even saw it coming; once they realized what was happening, they tried their best to stop it.<p>They make phones and tablets &lt;i&gt;NOW&lt;&#x2F;i&gt;. They didn&#x27;t five years ago and who nows what they&#x27;ll be making 5 years from now. What did Google have five years ago? Search, Maps, Gmail and Youtube. What do they have today? Search, Maps, Youtube, Gmail and thanks in part to Apple, Chrome and Android. Everything else is a research project.<p>Now, don&#x27;t get me wrong, I love Google. I use Gmail, Youtube and Maps religiously. Google Glass &lt;i&gt;IS&lt;&#x2F;i&gt; the future. Every one of their research projects is a vector for change in the world, but let&#x27;s not pretend that they work in isolation. Technologies feed on each other, ideas spring new ideas, companies inspire other companies, to create and to compete. To reinvent.<p>I am glad to live in the time of Apple and Google. Don&#x27;t ruin it with hate.

Google is NOTHING like Bell Labs. Bell did real research, not research that had a ROI counter tied to it.<p>Google researches what makes Google money - period. If this is the current generations &quot;hero&quot;, then we&#x27;re doomed.

I&#x27;ve been reading The Idea Factory by Jon Gertner recently and I feel like the parallels between the two are really striking. The advent of Google X projects, the Motorola acquisition, and all of the recent robotics acquisitions make it feel like Google is actually building the future that I&#x27;ve been dreaming of since I was in elementary school.<p>I only hope that the next wave of technological innovation will be far more decentralized than the last one. We haven&#x27;t had a Bell Labs like organization in a long time. Maybe one day we won&#x27;t need one.

It&#x27;s fascinating how successful Google has been at marketing itself to geeks - it doesn&#x27;t matter that none of the really cool stuff has actually shipped (and perhaps will never ship). The dream is there, and that&#x27;s enough to get the kids in to work on improving advertising (while dreaming of changing the world).<p>Is that cynical? Probably, don&#x27;t mind me. It&#x27;s just reading these comments you&#x27;d think self-driving cars, say, were a done deal, and yet when I read things like this they seem an awfully long way away:<p>&gt;The Google car has now driven more than half a million miles without causing an accident—about twice as far as the average American driver goes before crashing. Of course, the computer has always had a human driver to take over in tight spots. Left to its own devices, Thrun says, it could go only about fifty thousand miles on freeways without a major mistake. Google calls this the dog-food stage: not quite fit for human consumption. “The risk is too high,” Thrun says. “You would never accept it.” The car has trouble in the rain, for instance, when its lasers bounce off shiny surfaces. (The first drops call forth a small icon of a cloud onscreen and a voice warning that auto-drive will soon disengage.) It can’t tell wet concrete from dry or fresh asphalt from firm. It can’t hear a traffic cop’s whistle or follow hand signals.<p><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/11/25/131125fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;reporting&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;25&#x2F;131125fa_fact_...</a>

Right, Microsoft Research, IBM Research.. they really have nothing to show for. Google also has what an advertising system and a site to search things for, send&#x2F;receive email and watch videos, some phones.. that&#x27;s it. Everything else has been videos and PR.

For all those that are arguing that Google isn&#x27;t Bell Labs because Bell Labs invented more stuff and gave it away: there is a reason for that: Xerox PARC.<p>Xerox PARC is the Bell Labs of the computing industry, and its spectacular failure to do anything to help Xerox hangs heavy over commercial research labs in computing.<p>Google is <i>determined</i> not to let its lab projects be another Xerox PARC. For better or worse that means there does tend to be a profit goal at the end of most of their research.

Being the next Bell Labs is both an honour and a disgrace. Bell Labs funded basic sciences which provided much of the technology you see before you today. Certainly this was a great example of corporate research. However, Bell Labs was funded by a government sanctioned monopoly over the telecommunications sector in the US. AT&amp;T repeatedly stifled innovation (see MCI) and abused its monopoly and neglected to implement the research coming outs of its labs (parallel with Xerox).<p>Google provides an interesting foil to AT&amp;T. They both have&#x2F;had effective monopolies over a telecommunication sector and large research operations. However, the differences are quite large. Google has not funded basic research on the same level as Bell Labs. It also is more keen to productize the research it does. Additionally, its monopoly is part of an ecosystem of services on the internet and is not as complete as Bells dominance over telephone lines.<p>Read Tim Wu&#x27;s &quot;The Master Switch&quot; for a much more complete history of Radio, Television, Film, Phone and Internet communication companies in the USA. It&#x27;s a fantastic read and provides the background for intelligent conversations about the telecommunications industry.

You cannot mention Microsoft in the article like this and completely dismiss their Research arm. Even Amazon&#x27;s PR stunt with &quot;drone delivery&quot; gets mentioned, but not a real-deal research, seriously?

so things like the watson ai by IBM or MS Kinect arent groundbreaking tech?<p>Google does cool stuff, but saying no one else is seems pretty ignorant

&gt; Apple has pretty phones and tablets and that’s really it.<p>interesting conclusion. i must be hallucinating my macbook air, mac pro, os x + apps, and airport network then.

Just because Google doesn&#x27;t put as much work into keeping their future ideas secret, you can&#x27;t assume Apple doesn&#x27;t have equally ambitious ideas. You just won&#x27;t find out about then until Apple thinks it is worthy of your attention.

Just because everyone is not making alpha releases of their products, does not mean they are not working on ground-breaking technology (which works) either. If you understand Apple, you will get my point.<p>I don&#x27;t want to take any credit away from Google. But there is a thin line between a gimmick and something earth shattering. Unless, I practically see, the practical use of these products (by google) I am more inclined to think, they are merely cheap gimmicks.<p>Google at best, can replicate a feature. But sadly that trick is no longer working. read: G+ and all they have resorted to gimmicks like this.<p>Oh yea, I am an Apple asshole but that does not make my above point invalid.

&quot;Only Google is investing in truly groundbreaking research.&quot; guess author hasn&#x27;t seen <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;research.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;</a>

Last year, Apple spent $1.1B on R&amp;D (<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAAPL&amp;fstype=ii&amp;ei=nTeuUqjmH4KEsge5Mw" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAAPL&amp;fstype=ii&amp;ei...</a>). Google spent $6.6B (<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/finance?fstype=ii&amp;q=NASDAQ:GOOG" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;finance?fstype=ii&amp;q=NASDAQ:GOOG</a>). The big spender will suprise many: Microsoft spent $10.4B (<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AMSFT&amp;fstype=ii&amp;ei=XjeuUsA-pPOxB_lC" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.co.uk&#x2F;finance?q=NASDAQ%3AMSFT&amp;fstype=ii&amp;e...</a>).<p>Also, the majority of Google R&amp;D (at least that I am aware of) is much more applied than fundamental. The Google Car and Google Glasses are cool, but they will never win Nobel Prizes.

This is a pretty broad generalization. Not to mention, just because Google has better advertising and promotion of its new ideas and research, I&#x27;d not discount Apple, IBM or Microsoft. If anyone, IBM has consecutively stood the test of time with new innovations and inventions. World changing.

Uh, Apple created the Macintosh, the iPhone, and the iPad. I would give them a bit more credit for creating new industries if we&#x27;re going to start comparing them to Google on that front.

Somehow related: Has Apple Really Ever Invented Anything? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFeC25BM9E0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=wFeC25BM9E0</a>

Very interesting article I think. But I think that says Google is the new Bell Labs is a bit exaggeration. While Bell Labs did most of its inventions from scratch and with a lot of search, what Google do in most part of its products is improvement of existing ones. And no, I&#x27;m not a Google hater.

Google is Bell Labs; William Bell&#x27;s Labs (Massive Dynamic) from Fringe (<a href="http://fringepedia.net/wiki/William_Bell" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;fringepedia.net&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;William_Bell</a>)

I don&#x27;t see Google working on detecting cosmic background radiation from the origins of the universe any time soon.