Comments on: Microsoft does something not terribly evil

Microsoft does something not terribly evil

Tlogmer — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 16:02:50 -0800

Scientific American on Microsoft's new, gigantic attempt at a Palo Alto.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 16:26:21 -0800

Interesting, but a pretty lightweight article.

By: neustile

neustile — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 16:55:02 -0800

new? MSR started in 1991.

By: caddis

caddis — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 17:16:48 -0800

It would be nice to see Bell Labs revisited. AT&T had to give it up after they lost their monopoly, but Microsoft still has its monopoly. Bill Gates has shown incredible generosity in charitable contributions, and in some respects a Bell Labs environment is such an endeavor. However, it also spins off lots of technology useful to its founders. In today's fast paced environment it may be even more valuable. Part of the loss for AT&T was the incredibly long lag between innovation and commercialization at the time. Perhaps today stellar advances could hit the market before the patent actually expires.

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 18:26:17 -0800

neustile -- it may have started then, but it's only recently become a big enough effort to be important; MS has been luring in top comp sci people gradually (that was the impression I got from the article, at least).

By: neustile

neustile — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 19:20:52 -0800

no, it's been big enough for a while now. They've been luring in compsci people for quite some time, as long as I can remember. The article doesn't indicate any new hiring push, as a matter of fact I bet they're hiring less than usual now (along with all the other labs, though it's getting better.) They are a bigger and of course better-funded version of many other somewhat successful labs around the US; ibm, nec, at&t/lucent/avaya/whathaveyou, parc, mitsubishi, upstarts yahoo & google, compaq/digital/hp...

By: Vetinari

Vetinari — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 21:45:21 -0800

Microsoft's problem isn't that they need more smart people working for them, it's that the universe of ideas they can exploit commercially is tiny. Their commercialization of research must by necessity be constricted to those areas that have absolutely no real impact on either operating systems or applications software. Microsoft knows how to sell Windows, and they know how to sell Office, and they are very, very good at it. If the world were to change appreciably in any way, they would risk disrupting their money-printing machine.

By: Kwantsar

Kwantsar — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 22:59:13 -0800

The amusing thing about that article is that the exact same "research" ideas are shown every year at TechFest. Google around, and you will find the same "innovations" being shown in 2000, 2001, 2002. On the plus side, they were giving out 256 MB USB memory drives last year. If any of your friends work for Microsoft at the Redmond/Bellevue location, make sure they bring you one. There are also some interesting technologies and tools that are developed in parallel in the research org and the product orgs. Microsoft doesn't have the software development discipline that Open Source mandates, so it is often faster just to write new code from scratch than to try to replicate the custom build environment that some random researcher is using. It is cool that Microsoft hires a bunch of PhDs, gives them decent salaries, and all the Microsoft software they can handle. But don't expect either (1) MSR to have any positive impact on revenue or the stock price or (2) MSR to cure cancer* or otherwise contribute generally to humanity. *cancer: Bill contributes to outside organizations that are trying to cure cancer. If MSR was so great, you would think that Bill would either ask THEM to cure cancer, or expand their ranks to encompase cancer researchers.

By: PenDevil

PenDevil — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 00:16:18 -0800

I wonder how many of these researchers are dedicated to security related topics?

By: davidchess

davidchess — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 07:38:27 -0800

"They are a bigger and of course better-funded version of many other somewhat successful labs around the US; ibm, nec...": in fact I don't think Microsoft Research is bigger than IBM Research (the numbers that I find are 700 and 2,000+ people respectively, although I don't know if they're counting exactly the same things). I believe IBM also spends more on Research than Microsoft does (at least that's what I find on the Web). [Note that I work for IBM Research; but I've never actually counted the people or the dollars myself... *8)]