Sergey Brin and Larry Page will be attempting to invent the Future with $10 billion a year in research budget

Invent is what Larry Page’s hero, Nikola Tesla, did. It is what Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin did in 1997, when they concocted a way to make “all the world’s information available” on the Internet. And it is what Sergey Brin wanted to do when he left to oversee Google X. While Larry Page got bogged down in bureaucracy (as Google CEO starting in 2011), Brin, in the words of one of Google’s first employees, who did not wish to be identified, was “out there inventing the future.” The employee went on to list Google X’s many accomplishments under Brin: a self-driving car; Google Glass; a contact lens that measures the glucose levels of tears; an entity called Calico, led by Arthur Levinson, with a mission of extending life.

The truth is that Larry Page suffered from Sergey Brin envy.

Most C.E.O.s who step down are pushed out, and then they prattle about wanting to spend more time with their families. Larry Page, by contrast, really does want to spend more time with Sergey Brin inventing the future.

They have about $70-80 billion in cash and liquidity.

Google has a research budget of over $10 billion a year.

DARPA’s budget is and has been about $3 billion to $3.5 billion per year

NASA has a budget of $15-20 billion per year but 80-90% of it is spent on facilities on the ground and administration and
mostly not for new ground breaking projects. Especially over the last thirty years the $300 billion of the space station and space shuttle
are discounted as mostly not enabling the next transformational thing.

SOURCE – New Yorker, Google Finance