Why they threw $168 million at this and not Robert Bussard's Polywell fusion reactor is beyond me. They even had Dr. Bussard come and talk about his project at one of their Google TechTalks back in 2006... but no, Google isn't interested in clean and virtually limitless power. Participating in a gigantic construction project in the middle of nowhere is more their speed.
Bussard believed that $200 million was what would take to get a full-scale test reactor built that would prove out the net-gain fusion capabilities of his design. He'd been working on the project with limited funding by the US Navy to stay off the radar of the DOE. All fusion research in this country is dominated by the DOE and their as-yet unproven approaches and they tend to restrict federal funding from going to a new approach. Once the information embargo was lifted, Bussard was invited to speak at a Google TechTalk and show everyone what he'd been working on for the prior 11 years during which he'd not published a damn thing.
It's been five years. Five years since that talk and to the best of my knowledge there has been no significant financial contribution into this radical piece of technology that would completely revolutionize domestic energy production; nothing outside of a few million here and there from the US Navy.
I have to say that I'm disappointed.