Google: Is the Company the Avis to Amazon Hertz?

September 4, 2017

Holiday time. You can think about the information in “Tech Companies Spend More on R&D Than Any Other Companies in the U.S.” My recollection is that this type of list was once the backyard for Business Week. Now it is the talk of a new “real” journalism outfit. The overall listing does not seem in or out of whack.

Wait, wait, do tell me the answer to these questions:

  1. Does the Google number include today’s “20 percent free time”?
  2. Does the Google number take into account the research activities buried within certain operating groups; for example, the merry band of “let’s make Google Plus great”?
  3. Does the Google number factor in the research conducted when eager Googlers team up with academics to probe the frontiers of science and technology?

If the answer to the questions is “Here are the breakouts?”—what’s the breakout for the Bezos machines?

Without granularity, my hunch is that both Amazon’s and Google’s R&D expenditures are not comprehensive.

In my 2003 The Google Legacy, I did some basic math about the dollar contribution of the then-20 percent time “value” for R&D. My recollection was that it was a big number.

Just a game show quiz question for this holiday, “How big?”

Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2017

Comments

One Response to “Google: Is the Company the Avis to Amazon Hertz?”

  1. Ernie Karoly on September 26th, 2017 5:20 am

    Hello, You have done a great job. I most certainly will obviously digg it and really suggest to our friends. I know they will be benefited from this website.

  • Archives

  • Recent Posts

  • Meta