# One-way mirror policy to protect startups from prying eyes.
"We can look into Google, but Google can’t look into the companies without asking," promises Miner.
and then they say:
# But that doesn’t mean strategic considerations will be ignored either.
"If a company comes in the door and it looks like something important for Google to acquire," says Maris,
"we will defer to Google’s corporate development department to take a look."
So pretty much Google won't look at your startup, unless the guys running things get the idea that what you are doing might be interesting to Google, so how exactly does that protect startups from Google getting a full look about your company?
There seems to be many ways that this could work. One is asking the company if their information can be passed on to the corporate development department. Another is simply telling the department a very limited amount of information, e.g., "I think you might want to look into acquiring newTechStartup.com", and no more.
surely if Google is looking to acquire they won't be interested in copying it?
And Google can always have a full look at your company - by approaching it for acquisition. It seems like a moot point, honestly - Google isn't exactly short of people with great ideas.
Shouldn't we all be treating this like just another VC? Everyone seems to be caught up in the fact that it's money coming from Google. But at the end of the day, it's money coming from an investor.
Obviously, because it's Google, they will be doing it differently. A couple of hints they give us are that they will "focus on seed and early stage startups across any industry". So obviously, amounts will be different than typical VCs. Also, the fact that it is pretty much a two person team (or that's how they are representing themselves), makes me think they are not offering the mentoring of a YC or the management of a VC.
I'll submit that it's safer to show your startup to GV than to a regular VC. A regular VC has a whole mess of portfolio companies, across many vintage funds, to share your stuff with (and in the case of DFJ, a whole 'nother mess of associated funds).
The odds that Google will rip off your idea to build something in-house as quickly as you can are astronomically small.
