They are clearly focused on moving technology forward and helping humanity. That’s great. However, pulling down 1M+ salaries (for L6+ developers) and using hundreds of millions or billions in borg resources while adding nothing to the bottom line is not in the interest of Google. Not to mention the negative effects on productivity as other Googlers attempt to replicate the “publish everything to support my brand” strategy of Deepmind.
I know Google is not a normal company in that Larry and Sergey have complete control of the company, but sooner or later they have to realize that Deepmind needs to be spun off, and further that Demis is entirely the wrong person to run Google’s AI. He doesn’t care a whit about Google, it is only a vessel to fund his research.
Products. A company is about products and customers not research papers. Academia or non-profits are about papers.