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!"