Cynical take - mostly to appear like a diverse tech company with lots of different products and services so they don't get regulated for their strength in the search advertising market.
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I think occam's razor might suggest they're trying to diversify their revenue so if search declines, they have fallbacks.
could be both
This is being done by Deepmind and Deepmind's main founder has always said he wants to use AI to advance basic science. I think that is maybe why they fell behind on chatbots for a bit.
As a Google engineer, I think it's two things:
- Great for recruitment: You're the most talented $SKILL in the world? Come to the team that is pushing humanity forward in all the ways that matter.
- Larry and Sergei actually care about humanity, and being a billionaire is kind of a side-effect of what they would have done anyway.
Its not like google is the first company to have a will R&D department. Xerox invented the mouse. AT&T invented unix & c. Etc
Not sure if you know this, but Larry nor Sergei run Google right now.