You are needlessly cynical, my friend. Money does drive a lot of corporate decisions, but plenty of stuff is done because "it's cool" or out of pure altruism too. It's possible to somehow attribute even altruism to eventual profits (altruism = good image = more business), but do we need to be so cynical?

Why does Google work on self-driving cars and cancer diagnostics?

...because nobody got rich off pharma, and the kind of AI tech on self driving cars has no real world applications.

Why aren't pharma companies developing internet advertising platforms, then?

If every company did every thing that everyone else ever did successfully... I can't even finish this sentence.

I think at least self-driving cars could be explained with: Reducing the cost on acquiring StreetView data.