incrediBILL - 8:03 pm on Jan 17, 2013 (gmt 0)

Ford doesn't have the luxury of spending unlimited amounts of money to build a driver-less car

Ford and many other car companies throw enormous amounts of money on R&D every year. What they don't have is the programming talent and data infrastructure of Google Maps needed to pull off such a project.

It's easy to vilify Google but Apple, largest corporation in the world with more cash in the bank than the US government, yet they didn't make a self-driving car nor could they with all that money because they lacked the raw data to make it function.

FWIW, you would think Apple would've been the company to attempt a project like Google Glasses as it's a natural fit with their product line yet it's Google bringing such cool technology to life. Yet again, infrastructure over wads of cash made the technology possible.

The only thing Google has monopolized is the ability to collect and organize massive amounts of data in such meaningful ways that they are the stepping stone to the scifi future we all dreamed about as kids.

BTW, in case you missed it, Google also has also built the Universal Translator like they had in Star Trek for Android. You speak into the phone, it translates it to text, translates the text into the target language and will also attempt to digitally speak in the target language.

Very cool.