Yes, the whole smokescreen about "All our divisions need to have a near-term profitability plan" is just completely unbelievable. For one thing, Alphabet can certainly afford a few pie-in-the-sky long shot projects, and for another, they don't seem to have a problem funding Go AIs with an even farther payoff horizon.
My guess is that the Boston Dynamics folks wanted to work on bipedal robots, and the execs back on the West Coast were worried about PR fallout.
That, and it's not that easy to sell "Don't be evil" as your company motto when you're building unstoppable steampunk automatons for the DoD.
That's sort of my point... the PR they got from the recent Boston Dynamics video was significantly less favorable. So DeepMind stays in the family, while Boston Dynamics is out.
According to some sources, they paid around $400 million for DeepMind. Boston Dynamics only cost them a bit more than that. They could have kept both of them running indefinitely.
My guess is that the Boston Dynamics folks wanted to work on bipedal robots, and the execs back on the West Coast were worried about PR fallout.
That, and it's not that easy to sell "Don't be evil" as your company motto when you're building unstoppable steampunk automatons for the DoD.