&quot;Moonshot&quot; is a Google term for &quot;we are going to put some money into this really long-shot idea, with the hope that even if we don&#x27;t achieve the stated objective we&#x27;ll get some cool technology&#x2F;IP out of it.&quot; Take a look a Project Loon and (initially) Google Fiber for other &quot;moonshots.&quot;<p>That said, Google projects benefit from having a huge infrastructure and amazing academic links (you can collaborate with Stanford&#x2F;MIT&#x2F;etc. to generate research.) It&#x27;s not just a startup starting from scratch with $50m, but an established player with deep pockets and amazing connections. Wanna collaborate with the leading specialist in this field? Google can make it happen. Wanna try some algorithm in 20k cores for a few weeks? Go for it. Wanna lobby around to get government involvement? There&#x27;s a whole department for that.