It is Not From The Benevolence of Google or IBM...

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

This is one of the most famous passages in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Smith was pointing out that individuals (people or firms) act in their own self-interest and we benefit from this.

A story in today's New York Times illustrates this principle. A few years ago, researchers at Google and IBM noticed that American students were having a tough time comprehending and managing the ever increasing influx of data that new computing technology was making available. So:

I.B.M. and Google set out to change the mindset at universities by giving students broad access to some of the largest computers on the planet. The companies then outfitted the computers with software that Internet companies use to tackle their toughest data analysis jobs. And, rather than building a big computer at each university, the companies created a system that let students and researchers tap into giant computers over the Internet.

But, is management at Google and IBM being altruistic? Is it their desire to see American students learn that is the reason they are making their resources available to students, free of charge? Not exactly:

Of course, it’s not all good will backing these gestures. I.B.M. is looking for big data experts who can complement its consulting in areas like health care and financial services. It has already started working with customers to put together analytics systems built on top of Hadoop. Meanwhile, Google promotes just about anything that creates more information to index and search. Nonetheless, the universities and the government benefit from I.B.M. and Google providing access to big data sets for experiments, simpler software and their computing wares.

It is not from the benevolence of Google or IBM that we receive data sets and simpler software, but from regard to their own self-interest.