Sure, Google has a policy of employing people with an strong academic background but I kind of think they're mostly grossly underutilised maintaining UI code or doing other drudgery. I'm sure a few get to exercise their academic muscles from time to time but according to friends of mine at google that's the exception rather than the rule.

I think you mis-interpreted the parent's example. Larry and Sergey were academics before they were founders.[1] Their research lead directly to Google's success. I believe Google still licenses Page Rank from Standford. (A huge win for the TTO at Standford)

[1] Sergey's academic homepage: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/

The fact they developed page rank at Stanford and then needed to licence it seems like a great reason to avoid Stanford. And possibly a great reason to avoid reading any academic research.

PS: 3am here so I am probably missing something obvious.

Probably you are. When the university pays you to develop something, and then only takes a minor cut of the profits, why would you want to avoid the university?

University of Waterloo (one of if not the biggest tech/entrepreneurial oriented universities in Canada) has pretty progressive IP policies.

Namely that it is "creator-owned" https://uwaterloo.ca/research/waterloo-commercialization-off...