So this article was presumably written beforehand and embargoed to coincide with the official announcement of Calico. While I guess there's nothing wrong with that, it does make me wonder what kind of pre-approved message is supposed to be imparted by a premeditated PR campaign.
Perhaps it is just to avoid scaring investors, going by Larry's concern assuaging in the second paragraph of his post.
One of the Google founders was also behind funding the first purely lab-grown burger eaten in London a few months ago. That also had an obviously professional PR campaign attached to it, although little of this was explicit in the press. A professionally edited HD recording of the event appeared on the BBC web site only a few minutes after publication, so obviously some PR mechanism was at play.
But that event wasn't to promote Google or anything else, it was absent of any commercial labels attached to the copy or the video itself, and no mention was made of who organized or funded it. I have no idea what the message, or the point of that campaign was either.
Google does everything in a very orchestrated campaign. Bash Adwords or Search here and you will see "them" show up to defend it.
But unless Google already transferred $x billions to Calico's bank account, I have to laugh at the 20-30+ year investment agenda and that somehow Google will be in for the long run--unlike other companies. This will be shut down the minute Adwords growth slows down...and they're running out of places to put them due to over-saturation and "free" traffic to sites is disappearing at an alarming rate already.
Google, Page, Brin should've put $500 mil each and then pledged regular contributions.
Or maybe this is Brin's divorce package: Calico will buy 123andMe for a lot of money ;-)
You don't have any information on how much money they have invested.
All you do is speculate and inform us about your aversion towards Google.
And the enlightening insight that Google would probably drop this project if their profits started going down isn't really informative unless you think that we all here have problems with understanding fundamental logic.
>>"You don't have any information on how much money they have invested."
I never said I had the info. The people that know this chose not to say it. I speculated, which is all we can do.
>>"And the enlightening insight that Google would probably drop this project if their profits started going down isn't really informative unless you think that we all here have problems with understanding fundamental logic."
It's not that informative, I give you that; it's Wall Street 101 and most know by now.
>>"about your aversion towards Google."
Not sure blind love and gullibility is any better, assuming that I have an aversion to everything Google.
> Google does everything in a very orchestrated campaign. Bash Adwords or Search here and you will see "them" show up to defend it.
I would assume this is because a lot of Google engineers read Hacker News and they want to defend their work, rather than because of an orchestrated PR campaign.
Actually, no. I never read HackerNews of my own free will. What happens is, there is a team in the PR division that scans all the comments for anti-Google bias. Then company wide, Matt Cutts, and sometimes Larry Page, sends out an all hands email, and asks all Googlers to visit HN and vote down the comments, and post rebuttals. Stock Bonuses are given for the best rebuttals, and if you get someone hellbanned, you get to fly on Larry's private jet, although I've heard they have killed that perk now that the cheap jet fuel deal from NASA fell through. Ah well.
Perhaps it is just to avoid scaring investors, going by Larry's concern assuaging in the second paragraph of his post.
One of the Google founders was also behind funding the first purely lab-grown burger eaten in London a few months ago. That also had an obviously professional PR campaign attached to it, although little of this was explicit in the press. A professionally edited HD recording of the event appeared on the BBC web site only a few minutes after publication, so obviously some PR mechanism was at play.
But that event wasn't to promote Google or anything else, it was absent of any commercial labels attached to the copy or the video itself, and no mention was made of who organized or funded it. I have no idea what the message, or the point of that campaign was either.
What are these campaigns trying to tell us?