Comment by doctorsher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctorsher | Hacker News Reader

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Still, though, MSR is one of the more prolific research institutions in CS. If they were a university, they'd probably be top-ranked.

I definitely agree. They have some top notch researchers, certainly.

I also agree that the budget comparison is apples and oranges, so I'm not quite sure why you brought it up. The OP made a grandiose claim about Microsoft's academic research funding, and made it quite clear with his discussion of Google that corporate research does not count. So I want a source for the amount of money Microsoft spends on pure academic research without the corporate ties.

Personally, I think if Microsoft spent anywhere close to a billion dollars on pure academic research, the funding situation in CS academia would be completely different. Microsoft grants would be pursued just as hard as NSF grants, because they would be such a major funding source. But that is not the case. Corporate grants are afterthoughts compared to the NSF for academics. Additionally, if Microsoft were plunking such a large amount of money into academic research, I assume they would at the very least publish that figure in a PR piece to cash in on some public good will.

> I also agree that the budget comparison is apples and oranges, so I'm not quite sure why you brought it up.

It's annoying that MSR's numbers aren't broken out from the R&D total. All we can do is speculate what portion of that goes to MSR et al, really.

But it's not surprising. There are all sorts of incentives for not breaking out those numbers. Still, the numbers are helpful. $14B is a lot of money. Even a small slice of that makes MSR one of the most prominent funders of CS research.

> Personally, I think if Microsoft spent anywhere close to a billion dollars on pure academic research... Microsoft grants would be pursued just as hard as NSF grants, because they would be such a major funding source.

I disagree with your perspective throughout this paragraph.

Funding grants for university faculty is NOT the only valid model for funding pure research. Therefore, we could very easily expect MSR to contribute a significant fraction of total US CS research funding without decreasing the competitiveness of the grant landscape for professors at universities.

To me, the distinction between "basic research" and "everything else" seems more important than the particular funding model used. So the criticism that Google has a bad track record with long-running research agendas is highly relevant, whereas 'how much money goes to academics in universities' is far less relevant.

> Additionally, if Microsoft were plunking such a large amount of money into academic research, I assume they would at the very least publish that figure in a PR piece to cash in on some public good will.

But of course, they already do that: "$14 Billion!"

> $14B is a lot of money. Even a small slice of that makes MSR one of the most prominent funders of CS research.

You are moving the goalposts. I am not saying Microsoft is not a prominent funder of CS research. I am challenging the notion they spend more than the NSF (or for an even stronger claim, the entire US Gov) on non-corporate CS research.

> But it's not surprising. There are all sorts of incentives for not breaking out those numbers. Still, the numbers are helpful. $14B is a lot of money. Even a small slice of that makes MSR one of the most prominent funders of CS research.

No, those numbers are not helpful. We have absolutely no idea what percent of that goes to academic CS research. It could be 10%, that would be incredible. It could be 1%, that is still great. It could be 0.01%, that isn't very notable.

> Funding grants for university faculty is NOT the only valid model for funding pure research. Therefore, we could very easily expect MSR to contribute a significant fraction of total US CS research funding without decreasing the competitiveness of the grant landscape for professors at universities. To me, the distinction between "basic research" and "everything else" seems more important than the particular funding model used. So the criticism that Google has a bad track record with long-running research agendas is highly relevant, whereas 'how much money goes to academics in universities' is far less relevant.

You are again moving the goalposts. The OP specifically said Microsoft was the largest funder of academic CS research.

> No, those numbers are not helpful.

I think those numbers are useful. Microsoft spends $14B on CS R&D. We can go back and forth about the R and the D, but that's still a freaking huge number.

> The OP specifically said Microsoft was the largest funder of academic CS research.

Needless to say, I'm not OP, and I never made any of the claims OP made.

The only purpose of my original post was to try and share what numbers we do have on this question.

And I stand by reply calling BS on the distinction between research based upon whether money is flowing into professors' research groups. Some of the world's greatest patent lawyers are retained by universities, after all.

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