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Comment by jpm_sd | Hacker News Reader

Xoogler here. There is zero chance that Google would get into this market. All the internal talk lately is about "only creating businesses at Google scale" which means $billions in potential revenue, or GTFO.

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Yes. And thus Google treads softly down the path to becoming a defense contractor.

That is the only path not available to the dominating robotics countries of Germany, Japan and Korea who are literally under the gun not to develop such arms and weapons (without approval of the US).

I don't believe you. Virtually maybe but literally? Even if virtual I still do not believe you. Sounds like hyperbole.

Literally the US can dictate what kind arms they can develop. It is required they comply to receive consideration for US military aid and to remain under the US nuclear umbrella (from other nuclear armed countries like China, India, Russia, etc...).

Those countries also don't want to spend too much money on their military. So they can't develop nukes, their citizens don't want that. We actually want them to spend more, not less, like Japan. South Korea actually built automatic turret guns that shoot without human control. So I call BS on the evil us wants to stop them from building robots.

This if exactly the perspective at funding large projects at IBM Research. Interesting that the industry R&D labs fund more like top VCs in that regard.

That is not surprising since the robotics market is already dominated by other companies from Germany, Japan, and Korea. DARPA made the mistake of opening their competition to Korea, and Korea dominated the competition with an innovative robotic design. It was obviously far ahead in terms of practicality and their design could already be used today.

Google is trying to enter a market already dominated and pieced out.

As a German with an interest in computer and electrical engineering looking for a viable career path, I'd like to know, what companies are y'all talking about?

for example Festo

And KUKA, which makes the best arms in the industry.

That's the kinda arms-industry I like.

Didn't Microsoft do that game? It was one of the signs of their decline.

That sounds a lot like a famous quote from Steve Ballmer as he watched Internet startups pass Microsoft by in the fast lane...

Agreed. The underlying assumption seems to be the employees at Google can spin up billion dollar businesses at will.

...which begs the question if I were able to spin up a billion dollar business at will, why would I work for salary and a minority equity stake at Google?

I can think of few large companies that don't strategize that way, yet there is usually room for widgets.

FWIW, this is not "lately". It was the same talk 10 years ago in GPS, etc.

I just hope Google learns from Android (the phone) and applies "lessons learned" when they start making androids (real robots).

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