Google started university research project with NSF grants helping them to create the goliath we see today, they probably would not exist otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_histor...

Also I would call most of the government projects that Oracle is on subsidies considering how little value they deliver and how much they cost.

> Ampex was developing a giant database for the CIA, and Ellison was assigned to the project, along with Bob Miner and Ed Oates. The CIA's codename for the project was Oracle. The project was something of a disaster, but it led eventually to the formation of Oracle Corporation and its current hugely successful range of databases. And in the same way that Apple based its Macintosh range of personal computers on original research done at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (Parc), Oracle's hugely successful "relational databases" were inspired by an idea developed by IBM.

Do you mean direct cash subsidies?

Or do you mean we don't need copyright protection, limited liability and bankruptcy protection allowing entrepreneurs to take risks, laws protecting investors and corporations, public education system, and so forth?

Why would Edison want all the credit? Newton said he only saw as far as he did by standing on the shoulders of giants. We are all inheriting the accumulated wealth and knowledge of all the people who came before us. Why not the people around immediately before us who built the society we live in?

> What significant subsidies did Microsoft/Google/Apple/Oracle/etc. get?

Existing in a country where a private company is a profit center as opposed to something for bandits to loot?