[MilStdJunkie]

A company like Google (or Apple for that matter), with their own freewheeling project systems, would rather jump into an olympic pool filled with razor blades and used condoms before taking any amount of money from the hellish morass that is the defense procurement system. The instant you enter the MIC, kiss goodbye to any of your internal business systems - you will be re-writing the way you work every second of every day. And not for the better, I might add. I think Google looked at the costs of that, looked at the contract, and said, nah, thanks, I'm good. Then went back to feeding NSA/NRO for black money delivered by men in coats.

Of course, now, post-ZIRP, things are a wee bit different.

[fwip]

Google does do work for the military.

Here is one source of many that came up from a quick Google search: https://techinquiry.org/?article=google-aerial

[MilStdJunkie]

Yeah, that's via an OTA, which is basically - comparatively - free money. It's not a PoR (Program of Record). PoRs are where (many naive people think) all the money is. All those people are incorrect. It is, however, the PoR which will ruin your goddamn business when you sign it. Congratulations, that is now all you do.

[ahmeneeroe-v2]

Agreed on defense procurement revenue vs their current revenue streams. But they are given national-level amounts of resources (eg gigawatts for their data centers). In a wartime footing that would go away unless they re-oriented to serve common effort.

[gaadd33]

I thought Google purchased things like gigawatts for their data centers on the open market? Can you link to something that shows its bring give to them from the government for free?