I just flicked through a few job ads on the career page of Google Research. All of them describe fundamental research oriented towards improving the commercial services of Google. It is very far from pursuing whatever one is interested in.
If you are one of the smartest people on the planet, you can work on whatever you're interested in. You can, if you want to, work on fundamental research at Google without any direct connections to commercial services of Google. Just look at their publications.
