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As someone who spent many years working on Amazon Picking software... I'm pretty sure there's a few companies that would just hand over a dumptruck full of money if those things actually worked as intended. It's such a hard problem space.

Either Google didn't have it working well enough to sell widely (without embarrassment) or else they're pants-on-head crazy.

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Big issue is that Google's market cap is huge, the amount of money they make is massive as well. For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$. Hence why lots of projects get killed. Making 300 million a year isn't enough money to move the needle at google.

I fully believe that's why alphabet was created. Allow the `bets` to not use the google branding and name, and stealthy create new companies that produce millions of revenue, but just not billions.

> For the risk to brand to be worth it, you've got to have a huge potential to make lots of $$$.

Then why not just sell the tech and team to someone else, or market the device under a different brand name?

Right, let's dedicate a new department to that. And, just in case other departments start expecting similar leeway, let's make this department clearly separate from the others.

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