Google certainly aspires to be the Bell Labs of our age, but is it doing that level of work? Two contrasting opinions: David Litwak (who is pro) and Zak Kukoff (who is con).

From Litwak:

“Bell Labs was the research division of AT&T and Western Electric Research Laboratories, originally formed in 1925 to work on telephone exchange switches. However, over the next 50 years or so, their research won 7 Nobel Prizes, for things very loosely connected to telephone switches, if at all. Among their inventions are the transistor, the laser, UNIX, radio astronomy and the C and C++ programming languages.

Under various ownership structures and names, Bell Labs spit out truly groundbreaking inventions for 50+ years. They still enjoy a measure of success, but by most opinions their best days are behind them, and many of their ~20 locations have been shuttered.

Google is the only tech company who has devoted significant resources to not just figuring out what the next big thing is, but figuring out what the big thing will be 15 years from now, much like Bell Labs used to.”

From Kukoff:

“I won’t argue with much of the article, because I think David makes some compelling points. Google is doing some compelling and interesting work, especially at Google X. But one big point missed by David (and many who agree with him) is that Bell Labs operated in no small part for the public good, producing IP like UNIX and C that entered the public domain. In fact, despite being a part of a state sanctioned monopoly, Bell Labs produced a staggering amount of freely-available knowledge that moved entire industries forward.”