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The Memo That Spawned Microsoft Research

Posted by timothy on from the good-ideas dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In 1991, Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold wrote a 21-page memo to Bill Gates, laying out a plan to create what would become Microsoft Research. Here is the previously unpublished memo and some analysis, along with the original slides that Myhrvold used to pitch the idea to Microsoft's top brass. With the future of Microsoft now in question, it's interesting to see how forward-thinking the company was 20 years ago. It even foresaw how pitfalls in tech transfer, organizational structure, and product R&D could make it fall behind future competitors---who would turn out to be Google, Apple, and Amazon in search, mobile devices, and cloud computing."

28 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. TL;DR Version by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    1) Research is good - every other large technology company does it
    2) An R&D department is relatively cheap compared to the money you might waste building the wrong things
    3) Let's set up a typical R&D department to do typical R&D things

    Zzzzzzzzzzzz....

    1. Re:TL;DR Version by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      See, but Microsoft research actually has some great ideas, but the corporate leadership seems to always insist on chasing the previous latest thing, after the markets have established themselves.

    2. Re:TL;DR Version by cryptizard · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't know if it was their idea from the start, but MSR is hugely different from other companies' R&D. They operate more like a university. Researchers are free to work on anything they want, without consideration to whether it will directly effect a Microsoft product or not. It is one of the few places left outside academia where researchers can do basic research in computer science.

    3. Re:TL;DR Version by EvanED · · Score: 2

      MS Research is not a typical R&D department. It's much more along the lines of something like Bell Labs than anything else. The only other industry research lab that even comes close to MSR currently is IBM's.

    4. Re:TL;DR Version by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know if it was their idea from the start, but MSR is hugely different from other companies' R&D. They operate more like a university. Researchers are free to work on anything they want, without consideration to whether it will directly effect a Microsoft product or not. It is one of the few places left outside academia where researchers can do basic research in computer science.

      I have no way to know if that's right or not, but I'm willing to concede that it's right. I wonder if the problem was that they accomplished nothing of value or if they did actually come up with great ideas, but the non-R&D management above them squelched them. In any event, Microsoft has always struck me as a reactionary rather than visionary, which is exactly why they are pursuing their current strategy of trying to become major players in phones and tablets. Microsoft just waits to see where everybody else in the industry is going and then they follow them and try to pretend that they were there first. In the past that worked pretty well on the PC side of things, but consumers understand phones and tablets enough that they can't get away with that in those areas.

    5. Re:TL;DR Version by steelfood · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Err, that's true of all old school tech R&D. Look at Xerox PARC, HP Labs, or especially the now-defunct Bell Labs, who gave us modern computing.

      Research that needs to have ROI is not research.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    6. Re:TL;DR Version by citizenr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, they let them research the shit out of stuff, and then SHELVE IT AND NEVER USE IT.
      M$ R&D department has only one role - to slurp up all the Stanford/mit/caltech they can get their hands on and deny other big corps (FB/google/amazon) that brainpower.

      --
      Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
    7. Re:TL;DR Version by cryptizard · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Of course, that's why I said one of the only places left.

    8. Re:TL;DR Version by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      Your ambiguous phrasing leads to the most natural parsing of your statement being the opposite of what you intend.

    9. Re:TL;DR Version by jbolden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Microsoft has mainly focused on implementing in a way that reduces labor (i.e. simplicity of configuration and administration) and software costs as a business strategy. On the OS side and the compiler side of the house they are tremendously innovative, I don't think you can question their accomplishments there. I think there is a tendency not to consider things like the design of the Microsoft networking stack or the internal structures for C# compilers when talking about Microsoft.

    10. Re:TL;DR Version by jrumney · · Score: 2

      MSR is hugely different from other companies' R&D. They operate more like a university. Researchers are free to work on anything they want, without consideration to whether it will directly effect a Microsoft product or not. It is one of the few places left outside academia where researchers can do basic research in computer science.

      I think that describes the environment at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, HP Labs, IBM Research and other predecessors perfectly. Microsoft Research was not unusual when it was founded. It is an increasingly rare environment today though, as the former giants of technology have shrunk and been taken over by beancounters more concerned with the direct short term value that each employee brings into the company than the long term value of cultivating ideas that might turn into the next big thing.

    11. Re:TL;DR Version by 0ld_d0g · · Score: 2

      Yes, they let them research the shit out of stuff, and then SHELVE IT AND NEVER USE IT.

      Who cares if they shelve it as long as they publish it. Just last week I benefited from their research. MSR has a paper on resolution independent curve rendering and using that technique to render text using implicit curves. People are using that to render fonts inside the pixel shader w/o any font/graphics API !

      M$ R&D department has only one role - to slurp up all the Stanford/mit/caltech they can get their hands on and deny other big corps (FB/google/amazon) that brainpower.

      Some evil trickery forces people to apply for jobs? MSR has a Vulcan mind meld?

      Besides.. I'm happy if they hire the smartest people and keep publishing papers. Everyone gets to benefit.

  2. and then he became a patent troll by alen · · Score: 4, Informative

    he started intellectual ventures some years later

    1. Re:and then he became a patent troll by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2

      Yup, he's Evil (tm). Even so, take a look at Intellectual Ventures; they take an unusual approach (for patent trolls). What Nathan learned from his time at Microsoft Research is that such a setup is great at generating ideas. And at IV, they do just that: farming ideas, without having to go to the trouble of actually turning these ideas into practical, marketable products. That is left as an exercise for the poor saps who think they've come up with an innovation until IV's lawyer pops round with an infringement ransom note.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  3. Nathan Myhrvold, super-achiever ...... by sgt_doom · · Score: 2

    .....and then Nathan Myhrvold got rich and went on to found an international patent troll predatory capitalist firm ---- that ole Nathan is soooo productive ---- OR NOT!

  4. Re:Now we know where... by SJHillman · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, that's from their D&D department, not their R&D department...

  5. A good idea by intermodal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    but it only works if you follow through on that knowledge to get an early foothold. You can identify as many future trends as you want without effectively getting to market early enough for it to matter with a good enough product to stick. The only thing that accomplishes is it gives you the ability to say "I knew that was coming!" And it's not just those who don't get into the market. It's also those who don't keep up with the competition. Palm and Blackberry offered the most widely used products of their type at one point, and now people giggle if you still have one.

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
  6. Future!? by dittbub · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is Microsoft's future in question?

    1. Re:Future!? by steelfood · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In a word: Metro.

      That's the biggest sign of Microsoft losing focus. When their little side projects (Zune, Kin, XBox etc.) stayed side projects, it didn't matter whether it failed or not because they didn't affect the money train of Windows and Office. But when their copy-of-a-competitor-and-almost-guaranteed-to-fail side projects start worming their way into their traditional, core, revenue-generating products, then it becomes a big, big problem.

      And not only did Metro infect their consumer products, but also their enterprise products. That's worse than Kodak inventing the CCD and killing themselves off. It's a Darwin award waiting to happen.

      With that kind of leadership and management, I'd say there's definitely a big question mark over their future. The question is whether they'll continue this trend and ultimately end up destroying themselves by alienating all of their customers, or if they'll be able to reverse it in time before they stop bleeding. With Windows 8.1 and Surface 2, it's really, really not looking good.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    2. Re:Future!? by jbolden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How is Metro a lack of innovation? They are the first major company to move towards ubiquitous computing. You may not like Metro but the ideas behind Metro are brave and complex (i.e. requiring innovation).

  7. Future of Microsoft in question? by SirGarlon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, timothy thinks the future of Microsoft is "now in question?" That would be an accurate thing to say about Research In Motion, but Microsoft isn't in bankruptcy or anything. It's not even operating at a loss.

    It's certainly true that Microsoft is past its halcyon days, and lacks either a coherent vision or any real popularity, but that doesn't mean it's on the brink of collapse.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
  8. Microsoft research by jbolden · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft research is doing some amazing things. Also there is a lot of content from the research group on Channel 9. Microsoft's problem is that their userbase is conservative. But as a result of their research they could at will turn on the tap and have tremendous innovations pouring out.

    For example Microsoft people (its open source but the contributors are mainly Microsoft) developed C-- which is a portable assembly language which has tail recursion, accurate garbage collection or efficient exception handling. I don't think anyone could follow how much this group does but from innovations in compilers, new systems for concurrency, new algorithms, computation biology.... it is frankly amazing. I only wish Microsoft was more aggressive in pushing their products to adopt more from their research team. Much as the slides talk about the problem Xerox had with Parc, Microsoft has the same problem.

    1. Re:Microsoft research by Bengie · · Score: 3, Informative

      Microsoft Research is the good side of Microsoft. They have done a lot of things, like a lot of GPU related features that everyone benefits from are because MS Research worked with GPU manufactures, other PHDs, and Kernel designers to create better scalable GPUs that interface better with all OSes. Most of their research is open, which also includes work on custom built 256core SMP systems that used fiber-optic IO channels, and worked with Intel and others on how to design OS Kernels and hardware that work well together. Because this research is open, it has helped Linux, BSD, and others.

      MS Research has a lot of great minds and they help bring together Software and Hardware and work as middle-men to help manufacturers on both sides.

    2. Re:Microsoft research by EvanED · · Score: 3, Informative

      Can you show some examples of Microsoft research?

      Pick any top-tier CS conference. They'll probably have something there.

      For example, OSDI '12 (MSR personnel on 5 papers, 2 of which all coauthors worked at MSR), PLDI 2012 (MSR personnel on 6 papers), SIGGRAPH 2013 (harder to sort through, but I count 16 papers with at least one MSR co-author), VLDB 2011 (8 research papers as well as several other things like demos, a keynote, an industrial paper, and a 10-year-retrospective best paper award), STOC 2013 (16 papers if I counted right!), etc.

      Seriously, I was not being choosy with those conferences -- the only choosy things I did was pick years for which there was an obvious page that listed the institutions with the authors instead of just the authors (e.g. VLDB 2013) because I'm lazy. If you pick a conference that covers a topic of interest, MSR has had something there. :-)

  9. The future of Microsoft now in question ... Huh? by PoliTech · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "With the future of Microsoft now in question ..." Huh? Who is questioning the future of Microsoft? Ya got a link timothy?

  10. Microsoft then and now by onyxruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comparing Microsoft then and now and you've got to make a number of comparisons on why they grew back then compared to being stagnant as week old molasses now.

    No stack ranking. Employees could focus on their job instead of everyone else's job.
    More risk taking. They were willing to try new products without worrying nearly as much about eating into their own sales for another product.
    Diversity. This was when Windows NT 3.1 was about to be released and it supported DEC Alpha as well as MIPS CPU's.
    Mind-share. They realized mind share was more important than an iron fisted DRM approach and didn't get absurd with DRM.
    Cheaper. At that time Unix workstations were a fair bit more expensive than Windows based computers and Microsoft was actually the cheaper option for the masses.
    Options. You could run just about anything you wanted with their common platform.

    I've got to imagine that I'm far from the only person that misses Microsoft from the days of old, before they became soul crushing monopoly that destroyed innovation at every opportunity. Would you believe people actually camped out overnight for Windows 95 and stores opened up at midnight just to sell it?

    Microsoft has since declared war on their employees, vendors, professionals, OEM's and just about everyone else in the industry. Nowadays they pull stunts like the Windows RT walled garden and call that diversity. Microsoft used to be a great company, but today that's as much history as the DEC Alpha.

  11. The memo has previously been published... by su5so10 · · Score: 2

    ... as part of Rick Rashid's Festschrift. http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/183790/Rick%20Rashid's%20Festschrift%207.5.12.pdf starting at page 131.

  12. So when did they develop... by funkboy · · Score: 2

    Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?