Comment by aetimmes

The fact that a $16.4B endowment exists doesn't mean that any of it is available to fight a pissing match with Google (whose market cap is still ~45-50x MIT's endowment) - in my experience at a similar institution, I was told "we have $X in endowments, but all of it is essentially already spent" - it had been earmarked for various projects 5+ years in advance.