One huge difference with YC is the funding amount. YC essentially pays a low salary for a few months to build a prototype. That narrows the talent pool down to people with very minimal financial requirements (couldn't be more than ~5% of the total Great Hackers in the US).
Google could afford to take all the other ~95% of Great Hackers by paying a high salary until the project is either killed or a success. The big problem is that Google doesn't fire people for failing, they just move them around like most big companies do. They suffer from the "good effort" syndrome, where people are rewarded for "trying" even if when they fail to produce "something users want".
5%? Really? There's a huge class of young entrepreneurs, who have limited financial requirements (notice, I'm not using the word desires), and slightly older hackers who have greater requirements (car/house/etc) but probably have worked long enough to supplement the YC income with their own stock options, savings, etc.
If you really want to build something new and interesting, you should be willing to make financial sacrifices to make it happen. If you're comfortable, you probably won't be as hungry.
But our goal is to hook people up with investors, and investors are eager to invest in anything promising. Most great hackers can make something promising enough to interest investors in 3 months, esp. with our advice about how to do it.
Well obviously it happens, seeing how Infogami/Reddit deal occurred. They probably have a lot more than between the average set of startups, at any rate.
