I'm not sure what the intention of the OP was but I read it as those engineers could help push those efforts forward by doing what they do best -- writing software. Not all of those involved in the effort to cure cancer are studying chemicals and making drugs. There's also people who have to run some matrix calculations with MATLAB code, or who have to transcribe experiments into excel sheets. It's hard to think that if we took the pool of talent that makes the information-collecting products that Google makes, it wouldn't have any difference in the amount of progress made