I daydream sometimes that lightning strikes and both google and facebook suddenly go out of business.

So many of the world's best and brightest software engineers work at those companies. Suddenly out of work they'd be motivated to start those little business they've always wanted to have. I think we'd see an explosion of cool new ideas & businesses pop up in the tech community.

Not just Google. Trust me, it happens at lots of large companies that have plenty of money to waste.

Courter point: The team here developed some interesting new mobile microscopy techniques. It's possible, had the project completed development, that some other cool things could have come from a "useless" tech-art project.