The car business is fantastically large. If Google can license its technology to power the next stage of personal transportation, the revenue received will dwarf its 30% vig on selling Angry Birds.

Either way, it's not that they are taking money and resources from Android and dedicating them to cars and augmented reality. I don't think more money and more people is what Android needs.

If they were man enough to actually license. I recently say sebastian thrun speaking and he turns investor off. Hand a professor a cheque and he'll hand you a pipe dream. Google needs to be hiring more wall street sharks.

There are plenty of Wall Street types at Google, the last thing they need is to have them in control of innovation. The scientists won't be in charge of sales or licensing, I think it's great that the MBAs aren't in charge of product development.

Maybe Google won't license it, maybe Google will give it away like they do Android. Since I don't see them manufacturing cars, those are about the only options other than canceling the effort.

You are correct that "The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money" and with driverless cars and google glasses the CEO is doing exactly that.

Also people working on these projects are scientists at googleX they are completely different from the Android team ... Google has enough resources (people and money) to pursue these long term research project without hurting their short term business too much.

> You are correct that "The CEO's job is to allocate resources to initiatives that will make the company money"

Actually that's not strictly true. The CEO's job is to satisfy the shareholders/board of directors. Normally that coincides with making the company money, but not always - the idea of a legal duty to maximise share value is a widely held myth. In the case of Google, most of the shares are still held by the founders. If they just want the company to do cool and impractical things they have the right and the capacity to make it do so.

A lot of people would argue that a CEO's job is to innovate and that profit is just a means. Starting a company (and making yourself CEO) doesn't mean you have to change your priorities from improving the world to increasing your annual return. Lots of world-changing technology has financial gains that aren't realized for years. As long as you have enough money in the short term, which Google does, you can afford such R&D. I can't imagine the inventions at Bell Labs were profitable in the short term, but we wouldn't be typing posts on HN if they didn't exist. Do you think expensive technological innovation should be relegated to the government? Who do you trust to get us to Mars first, NASA or companies like SpaceX?

The effect of a driverless car isn't necessarily that it drives itself. It's a car that's aware of its surroundings and provides feedback to the driver. Mercedes already implemented collision avoidance, driverless car can potentially prevent running over curbs, pedestrians or provide better control. In any case, lack of innovation is a pretty easy way eventually lose ground.

Can't tell if you're joking.

The only joke here is Google.