A true story: a CS professor promotes Java widely and even writes undergraduate textbooks on Java. Goes off on sabatical with Microsoft Research, and becomes a

A true story: a CS professor promotes Java widely and even writes undergraduate textbooks on Java. Goes off on sabatical with Microsoft Research, and becomes a .NET evangelist. Stops writing Java books and starts writing .NET books. Is there a quid quo pro? Probably not. But it does illustrate another purpose for Microsoft having a research organisation: winning over academics, and, by proxy, their students.