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Google Snapping Up Top Biomedical Talent (nature.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google is expanding its scope once again. The company has been pushing hard to lure top physicians and researchers in the life sciences away from their prestigious academic posts. Google is easily able to pay more than universities, and they also offer a different type of focus. "Silicon Valley offers strong technology resources that are hard to access in academia, Topol says, as well as the opportunity to pursue goals that are difficult to reach for in academia, where scientists are not typically rewarded for pursuing real-world applications." Other companies are starting to push into this sector as well, but none of them match Google's efforts; it's estimated the company is now pouring a billion dollars a year into life-sciences research.
Is this really Google's doing because none of this seems to be search engine related. It seems far more likely that this is Alphabet's doing.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
many of them will return to academia. I had more time off the two years I taught comp sci than I have had total the past twenty-two years in private industry. A 90% cut in your vacation time will wear you down, especially if you were used to having it.
What water and electricity utilities?
None that I know of, but they've been really successful at being a fiber-broadband utility company, something that most governments around the US are absolutely lousy at facilitating. Instead, they stupidly (or corruptly) grant monopolies to shitty companies like Comcrap who then rape consumers with high prices and horrible service. Great job, governments! Yes, there's a few rare exceptions like Chattanooga, but most state governments prefer to ban municipal broadband like Chattanooga's. Again, great job, governments!
What public health care systems have they created and managed?
None, but neither has the US government. Healthcare in the US is a complete disaster.
There are some governments which seem to do a pretty good job at a lot of these services, but they're all over in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Over here, government is totally and utterly dysfunctional and corrupt.
Just a couple weeks ago I attended the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual meeting in Baltimore. There were somewhere on the order of 7,000 people attending. So, if Google wanted to "own" genomics research - just in the USA - and not other huge fields like cancer research - then they would have to hire many thousands of research scientists. Now, Google (well, technically Alphabet) is a very big company so it wouldn't be impossible for them to hire that many research scientists. But, at the moment, they aren't hiring anywhere near that many research scientists.
Things could change quickly but, at the moment, Google is really just a teeny-tiny insignificant little player in the general field of biomedical research. Sure, they've got a couple very small projects that rate very high on the coolness factor. But even just compared to other established healthcare companies (i.e. that own major hospital systems and HMOs), Google is a very minor player.
TL;DR - in the near future your base (pairs) may belong to a private corporation but it's unlikely to be Google/Alphabet.