Google research budget will be twice as large as DARPA in 2012
Google will be spending about $6 billion on research and development in 2012
Google reported revenues of $10.65 billion for the first quarter which ended March 31, 2012, an increase of 24% compared to the first quarter of 2011 ($8.58 billion). But minus traffic acquisition costs, Google pulled in $8.14 billion in revenue. Google spent about $1.5 billion on research and development. Google spent about 18% of revenue (after traffic acquisition) on research and development.
In the last quarter of 2011, top US public companies for R&D spending were:
Microsoft $2.517 billion
Intel $2.401 billion
IBM $1.6 billion
Google $1.44 billion
Oracle $1.226 billion
Apple $842 million
Darpa has an annual budget of about $3.2 billion which is a quarterly budget of $800 million.
Microsoft and Intel are each over three times the R&D budget of DARPA.
I expect Google to increase its R&D to match its 24% growth. This should put Google ahead of IBM in R&D spending in 2012. If Google is able to maintain growth then in 2014 it could have the largest R&D spending.
Intel, IBM and Microsoft have had relatively little revenue growth. Microsoft did have about 4.5-6% revenue growth in its first quarter. Intel and IBM have had flat revenue.
Internet advertising is still projected to grow in the double digits each year.
Batelle has its annual global research and development funding forecast for 2012
The Battelle-R&D Magazine annual Global R&D Funding Forecast released today shows global research and development (R&D) spending is expected to grow by about 5.2 percent in 2012 to more than $1.4 trillion.
Experts from Battelle and R&D Magazine forecast that a 2.1 percent growth in United States R&D expenditures will be balanced against an estimated 2 percent inflation rate, suggesting that U.S. R&D investments will remain flat in real terms over the next year. That $436 billion in forecasted spending is expected to be broken down in the following way:
* U.S. Private Industry will spend by far the largest amount with a projection of $279.6 billion in R&D in 2012, up 3.75 percent over 2011.
*U.S. Federal Government spending will reach $125.6 billion in 2012, a decrease of 1.16 percent.
* Academia in the U.S. will spend $12 billion on research in 2012, up 2.85 percent over last year.
* Non-profits will increase spending in 2012 by 2.7 percent to $14.5 billion and other government entities in the U.S. will round out total R&D expenditures by increasing 2.72 percent to $3.8 billion.
During the past two years, ICT-related manufacturing has been particularly volatile, with leading companies experiencing commercial dynamics following the introduction of new products arising from R&D decisions. Despite these fluctuations the United States’ R&D spending in the ICT industry is forecast to increase by 9.9 percent, reaching $138.8 billion in 2012. This U.S. growth helps drive an overall global ICT industry growth of 4.1 percent to $238.5 billion.
Google’s Research is not yet translating to lots of Patents
The top 50 companies in terms of patents assigned in 2011.
Rank Grants Company Name Country 1 6180 International Business Machines Corp United States 2 4894 Samsung Electronics Co Ltd KR Korea 3 2821 Canon K K JP Japan 4 2559 Panasonic Corp JP Japan 5 2483 Toshiba Corp JP Japan 6 2311 Microsoft Corp United States 7 2286 Sony Corp JP Japan 8 1533 Seiko Epson Corp JP Japan 9 1514 Hon Hai Precision (Foxconn) Taiwan 10 1465 Hitachi Ltd JP Japan 11 1448 General Electric Co United States 12 1411 LG Electronics Inc KR Korea 13 1391 Fujitsu Ltd JP Japan 14 1308 Hewlett-Packard Development Co L P United States 15 1248 Ricoh Co Ltd JP Japan 16 1244 Intel Corp United States 17 1164 Broadcom Corp United States 18 1095 GM Global Technology Operations LLC United States 19 1005 Renesas Electronics Corp JP Japan 20 997 Honda Motor Co Ltd JP Japan
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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