Was Xerox PARC a consulting firm, a developer or a construction company?

It was a research campus, no?

Right, an R&D lab. I imagine this will work similarly, in that Google will have a contract to develop some infrastructure and will have sole discretion to lease space and resources to others for R&D purposes.

They would act kind of like a developer here, but it's not to develop specific things, like commercial or residential space, it's probably a lot more open than that, which is why people are having trouble classifying it using traditional terms.

It's like trying to classify App Engine or AWS before cloud infrastructure became a thing, when everyone ran their own servers; it requires a new category all its own.