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While Microsoft may not be shipping a LSM program to every user, they are doing a ton of scientific research, much more than Apple. For example googling "latent semantic analysis microsoft research" turns up several research papers on the topic by Microsoft. They do cutting edge research comparable to a good university on a large number of topics like programming language design, compilers, machine learning, distributed computing, graphics, automated theorem proving etc.

Microsoft research does some amazing things. But like Xerox PARC they never seem to ship anything. Except for the kinect, that's been a reasonable success.

Actually MS SQL Server does ship with a set of data mining algorithms for some time now

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175595.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175382.aspx

afaik these are only in the paid versions.

No, MS doesn't ship this stuff with Windows.

But MS Research has some heavyweight chops on board, and IMO is an excellent institution.