Google, Microsoft, Sun to Fund New Internet Lab

brajesh writes "Yahoo! News has an AP story about Google, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems coming together to back a new Internet research laboratory aimed at helping entrepreneurs introduce more groundbreaking ideas to a mass audience. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems or RAD lab is scheduled to open Thursday and will dole out $1.5 million annually over five years, with each company contributing equally. From the article : 'Conceivably, the lab's services could help launch another revolutionary company like online auctioneer eBay Inc. or even Google, which has emerged as one of the world's most valuable companies just seven years after its inception in a Silicon Valley garage.'"

Comments

Cheaper than developing

[Divide By Zero]

Google, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems coming together to back a new Internet research laboratory aimed at helping entrepreneurs introduce more groundbreaking ideas to a mass audience ...so they can buy the rights to it, lock it down, and make it proprietary to their platform.

It's the American Idol of developers. "We'll let you show off, decide who's best, sign them to a nasty license, and own your soul."

(Kidding, but only half.)

I don't get it...

[IAAP]

Sun Microsystems Inc. also is joining the $7.5 million project at the University of California, Berkeley. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems, or RAD, lab was scheduled to open Thursday and will dole out $1.5 million annually over five years, with each company contributing equally.

That's chump change to Microsoft and Google (I don't know about SUN). Why aren't any one of them just funding the whole lab themselves? It's great that Berkely is getting some needed funding, but I think that this may some sort of PR thing. Just my 5 cents.

Bargain

[__aahlyu4518]

So for $2.500.000 each they will get access to the brightest ideas concerning the internet in the next 5 years... Is it just me or is that the bargain of the century?

Re:Bargain

[kevin_conaway]

.So for $2.500.000 each, they^H^H^H^H everyone will get access to the brightest ideas concerning the internet in the next 5 years... Is it just me or is that the bargain of the century?

Fixed that for you.

FTFA

[ZiakII]

"We realize if research isn't being done in university laboratories," he said, "then the pipeline of ideas and computer science graduates coming into our companies eventually is going to dry up."

I hate to say it but I somewhat disagree, now that web hosting has gotten so cheap most can be done in there home/dorm, most just need the drive and the idea of what they want to do.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oh what a load of bollocks!!!

[coralsaw]

I've heard this before, when VISA and MASTERCARD got together to create the one and only mobile payment system, with very limited funding. Which didn't go anywhere because it was underfunded and thus non-committed to by its founder members.

These people, Google MS and Sun, won't even spit on the ground for $1.5 mil, let alone create a business plan... If they really intended to go beyond window dressing, they should have put their money where their mouth is and pour some real money into it.

It's an intended failure from the word go. /coralsaw

Probably wasteful

[radiumhahn]

Throwing money at inventors to make them innovate faster is similar to throwing money at monkeys to make them evolve faster. The process of invention is very organic... inventions, products, and business ideas respond well to having money thrown at them...usually, but actual discovery does best with long term support and development... not rapid cash with little supervision.