I'm not saying that the papers that get published aren't good or valid. "Good enough to publish a paper" is indeed good.
It's just that once the paper is published, it becomes a cul-de-sac, a nice little city with no roads leading in or out, etc. Other researchers can only use the result by reproducing the idea by-hand (or at best through crufty Matlab code).
Yes, I'm sure the papers I've scanned involved considerable work and data (I worked in computer vision). But that work is often if not generally unavailable to the reader of the paper.
The point is that in creating a working system, Google has to do more than extend academic research, even if academic research involved good ideas that had been given some thorough tests in isolation.
It's just that once the paper is published, it becomes a cul-de-sac, a nice little city with no roads leading in or out, etc. Other researchers can only use the result by reproducing the idea by-hand (or at best through crufty Matlab code).
Yes, I'm sure the papers I've scanned involved considerable work and data (I worked in computer vision). But that work is often if not generally unavailable to the reader of the paper.
The point is that in creating a working system, Google has to do more than extend academic research, even if academic research involved good ideas that had been given some thorough tests in isolation.