Google started as a
research project—and research has remained a core part of our culture. But we also do research differently than many other places. To shed more light on Google’s unique approach to research,
Peter Norvig (Director of Research),
Slav Petrov (Senior Research Scientist) and I recently published a paper,
“Google’s Hybrid Approach to Research,” in the July issue of
Communications of the ACM.
In the paper, we describe our hybrid approach to research, which integrates research and development to maximize our impact on users and the speed at which we make progress.
Our model allows us to work at unparalleled scale and conduct research in vivo on real systems with millions of users, rather than on artificial prototypes. This yields not only innovative research results and new technologies, but valuable new capabilities for the company—think of MapReduce, Voice Search or open source projects such as Android and Chrome.