Still, probably proportionally less layoffs in MSR than the rest of the company overall during these cuts. The insinuation was that Microsoft is shuttering Research entirely, which is very far from true.
That doesn't seem unfair, given the layoffs.
For what it's worth, MSR historically hasn't been beholden to find commercial applications for their work. If anything, it's usually disappointing how much really cool stuff they come up with that isn't ever productized in an accessible way.