You can only rest on laurels for so long before they dry up and blow away.

Google meanwhile is an incredible company. Are you saying you know better than Hinton where the real progress is being made?

For example STEPS a full modern computing environment in 20KLOC from the metal up using DSLs and a reimagining of what an OS and the Web means.

Some more Info here: "STEPS 2011 Progress Report (personal computing in 20kLOC)" http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4436

"Alan Kay: How Simply and Understandably Could The "Personal Computing Experience" Be Programmed?" http://vimeo.com/10260548

"Programming and Scaling" http://www.tele-task.de/archive/lecture/overview/5819/

Some—perhaps many—of their alumni now work at Google doing cool things. For example, Ken Thompson and Rob Pike created Go at Google.

Now that's lazy thinking. No one accused Google or Verizon or of not having "many people" that do serious research.

Personally, I see absolutely no problem with what he did, he has a family and his future to worry about. After all these years he deserves to make a lot of money money and not have to worry about money anymore. Those that criticize him for "selling out" will probably sell their start-up to just about anyone for FU money.

What I find not true, especially in the past year or two is this:

"My impression of Google's leadership, employees, and choice of projects often leads me to believe that they sell ads so they can continue making really cool stuff - not that they try to come up with cool stuff so that they can sell ads."

Part of my job requires me to surf without ad-blockers and with Chrome. There's no trick in the book they do not use to make you click on ads or sign for their services. Even Chrome, the "open source" the supposed savior of the web now has ads. It totally changed my perception of them, and it's not like Google was struggling to pay their electricity bill. As a commercial enterprise, Google has the right to do that, however they cannot have their cake and eat it too.

By assuming that every single person who joins Google is somehow being used to optimize ad clicks, the implication is that they are abandoning whatever serious intellectual research they could have otherwise been doing.

> There's no trick in the book they do not use to make you click on ads or sign for their services.

This doesn't counter my point. The fact that their ad click team is actually doing its job doesn't mean anything about the greater motivation of the company.

exactly.

Academic salaries are low compared to salaries in the private sector, when equated for things like years of training, status in one's field, etc. Here are some facts:

- Google clearly has a self-interest in being a leader in machine learning technologies

- Geoff Hinton is a world recognized leader in this very field

- Google appears not JUST to be interested in selling ads ... but as many posts have said, they seem to have the ability to run in-house R & D in a somewhat more open way than most companies in the private sector

Here is some speculation:

- faced with the chance of working at Google on the very same topics one is already working on, but receiving ... 10x? 50x? even 100x? the salary, wouldn't you do it?

- think of it this way: if Geoff Hinton's google pay is a "mere" 5 million per year, then all he has to do is work under these terms for TWO YEARS and he will have made 67 YEARS of $150,000 per year salary (probably a median senior academic salary in canada)

let's stop criticizing and start getting excited about what's coming down the pipe

- and hope that google makes it all publicly available, and not just secret sauce