There are good reasons any company Google's size should devote resources to operations research. Google is really good at the research aspects, and has used the outputs to -- in some cases dramatically -- improve its own supply chain operations.

https://research.google/teams/operations-research/

The more general problem has broad applications, for Google you could see Waymo being another application.

Google Cloud is also building industry specific solutions. Showing you are a leader of research will be helpful in attracting customers.

https://cloud.google.com/solutions/supply-chain-logistics/

Google is known for their work on containers