research and development

At least that is what a reader is led to believe by reading this article that appeared over the weekend.  For those of you who didn’t catch it, Alphabet, which formerly had an R&D shop under the old Google moniker known as Google X, does pure R&D.  According to the reporter, one Conor Doughtery, the problem, you see, is that R&D doesn’t always translate into a direct short-term profit.  He then makes this absurd statement:  “Building a research division is an old and often unsuccessful concept.”  He knows this because some professor at Arizona State University–that world-leading hotbed of innovation and high tech–told him so.  (Yes, there is sarcasm in that sentence).