Any of the big companies -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon come to mind -- do tons of things that even 10 years ago would have been considered cutting-edge computer science research. Whether it's OS changes, algorithm development, database technologies, UI testing, or data science, those companies (among others) are working with far larger data sets than most university researchers can ever touch. Plus, they don't have to deal with the sorts of ethics committees that universities have in place.

On this last point, I should mention that my dissertation research involved the creation of a collaborative Web application for people developing agent-based models. The IRB (ethics board) insisted that anyone who would want to use my Web site would need to fax a permission form to the university office. You can imagine how this would have killed any use of my site, and thus of my dissertation work. It took several months of pleading with them to get them agree that usage of the site wouldn't require a faxed form. Doing that same sort of work at Facebook et. al. would have been a non-issue.

And yes, there are ethical and privacy issues associated with Facebook, Google, etc. I'm not ignoring them, merely pointing to the abundance of data and opportunities they have at their disposal.

There are still advantages to a university laboratory, including the cushion that you have from real-world profitability. There's something nice about being able to spend months or years looking at a problem, without having shareholders looking over your shoulder. But universities have their own politics and problems, and they're far from the pristine labs we'd like to imagine.