What's sinister in that list? I just see things that look like purchase orders for Google search appliances, a vague "research" contract at Army Research Labs, and what looks to be mapping consulting by NGA.

If you're going to make a claim and drop a link on us, please tell us what's actually there to support your claim.

The research contract is the stuff with their Boston Dynamics subdivision -- all the abusable quad walker robots and stuff.

(Standard disclaimer: my opinions, not my employer's. Not representing anybody else. I work at Google, not on these projects.)

Most googlers who are also engineers can find out what most of these things are, and I would expect many are already aware of what those projects are likely to be. It is a core part of our culture that we share information openly within engineering, and don't leak it.

We can't tell you what's happening. That doesn't mean we don't know.

The grandparent comment makes it sound nefarious, and there are a lot of people that dislike the US... but it doesn't sound too bad to me to bid on contracts for a democratically-elected government.

The NSA thing is disappointing and it's important that the electorate hold the government accountable, but democracy has not broken down yet, and the situation isn't quite as dire as, say, North Korea.

(Waiting for the "google employee compares US government to North Korea" headline, sigh...)

It's not about being "clean". It's that the most profitable way to go about it is not to sell the info, but rent its use over and over again, keeping the actual data closed (except to LE, of course).

If you assume they're completely profit driven, it still makes sense for them to protect your data from other companies.

Found something called Robogator in there