Nick answers your "Ask Slashdot" questions

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/28/0051241

The question is, "What pure research labs are left out there?"

Basically, for CS, the answer is Microsoft Research and no one else. IBM does have Watson labs, but researchers get their funding entirely from product groups, which means that if no product group sees potential benefit from the work you want to do, you ain't getting funded. Google doesn't have anything close to a pure research labs. Google has "Google Labs," which isn't exactly the same thing. Google labs kind of dicks around with things that don't have a concrete plan to be productized but are nonetheless aimed at something Google wants to do. There's a strong undercurrent of near-term applicability of those projects. Sun...well, Sun barely exists any more. How would you feel if you got laid off and found out your employer hadn't scaled back it's "blue sky" R&D?

Microsoft, on the other hand, has a fuckload of money, and are actively engaged in pure research for a variety of reasons. Contrary to popular belief, the research division is not accountable to any product unit and has an entirely independent budget. They are interested in a long-term productization of some of their research efforts, yes, but just as much if not more they also want to foster relationships with universities, be visible at major academic conferences, etc. They've had an historically rocky relationship with academia, and Microsoft Research is as much about fixing that relationship as it is about directly making money off of inventions.