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Microsoft Research Fights Critics
coondoggie writes to tell us Network World is taking a look at why Microsoft Research has to fight so hard against critics. From the article: "When the word 'innovation' is tossed about many may look down their nose at the company sitting on top of the high-tech industry — Microsoft. [...] Microsoft Research incubates not only futuristic ideas but young minds, having hired 700 interns worldwide this year including 250 computer science PhD candidates in Redmond alone, which is roughly 21% of all the computer science PhD candidates in the United States."
If Microsoft were less predatory and less a bully in business maybe the rest of the world would stop looking down their noses at Microsoft's "research". As it is, it looks less like research and more like unfettered spending to find "yet another" way to dominate.
I welcome research from any company. I'm guessing I've probably used what amounts to "innovation" from Microsoft, derivative of work from their labs.
Unfortunately for Microsoft (but true to their character) they have tools for mouthpieces like Ballmer. Microsoft inks a deal in what could only be viewed with raised eyebrows, and Ballmer punctuates that with "they're infringing our IP anyway...". As long as Microsoft continues to be so hostile to the world in general, they get what they sow.
Their research may be golden, but it's ill-gotten gains, the world thinks so, and the world is probably right. The fact that Microsoft has such a corner on every market that they can hire 25% of the Computer Science PhD candidates only adds fuel to the fires of suspicion.
In the interim, it's a shame Bell Labs has gone from world leader to nothing... budget cuts, etc. (Lucent)... there was some real research there, and lots of it was shared with the world.
It might come as a surprise to you but one doesn't get a Computer Science PhD to learn how to program, rather one does so to figure out what to solve with a program (unless you are working on Software Engineering).
I have a close friend who joined Microsoft Research last year after his PhD (which included interning there). He also had an offer from Google and a couple of hedge funds. His reason for taking MSR was that Microsoft, for all it's image does actually allow the MSR guys to pretty much do what they want to explore instead of forcing a direction driven by a profit making application of that work. This results in much research not ending up in products (so you don't see it), but doesn't stifle the people working there. This came as quite a surprise to me but when I look at some of the papers the groups in MSR have published, I wonder how far from the truth that is.
oh and BTW, they were paying a good 0.6x higher than Google so that would account for some of those PhDs.