MS Research. Hypocritical?

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

I just read this thread: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/120606-microsoft-research.html

How can MS be employing so many PhD candidates and still not be pumping out original ideas? This article can’t even list one!

I am curious, does anyone know of anything truly original that Microsoft has ever produced? I honestly can not think of one thing.

For example:

  • GUI - Xerox did that first
  • Direct3D - SGI’s OpenGL did that first
  • Spreadsheet - Visi did that first
  • 3D accelerated user interface - Apple did that first, then XGL…
  • etc. etc. etc.Is there anything significant that Microsoft Research has contributed to the IT community? It seems to me like it is just wasting someones time and money.
2

Flamewar incoming at 12 o’clock…

3

.NET framework. Kerberos?

I don’t know, it’s hard to figure out what they stole (which appears to be pretty much everything at this point), and what they actually developed on their own.

I do know that the “overall software” is usually microsoft’s specialization (if you can clasiffy that as innovation). They basically use the standards developed through all these other organizations/corporations and they put them to use in an actual application.