Volkswagen, Samsung, Intel and Microsoft[1] all spend more on R&D than Google does[2] and put that funding into a wide variety of areas just as Google does.

There's also non-profit research think tanks like Battelle[3]

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20160329190202/http://www.strateg...

[3] http://www.battelle.org/

Yeah, but if they have results like google they really manage to keep them secret.

MS research has historically been fantastic in computer vision.