6 ms·

By way of comparison, Microsoft is the single largest funder of academic CS research in the world, significantly larger than the NSF or US government, and unlik

• haeffin 8y ago
  Why do you think Google doesn't encourage publishing papers? Google has a very big amount of papers they publish ... as an example, https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/12/google-at-nips-2017.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/12/google-at-nips-2017.html
  • yodon 8y ago
    Nearly all the authors in that list are google employees, not independent academic researchers. That blog post is about Google’s employees publishing papers on work google owns, the same sort of work that google is attempting to secure patents on. This is very different from supporting independent academic research.
    • haeffin 8y ago
      Supporting independent academic research like https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/03/google-faculty-research-awards-2017.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/03/google-faculty-research-aw...?
      • yodon 8y ago
        Everything I’ve heard from academics is that the terms that come with funding from Microsoft are much better and more flexible for the academic than the terms that come with funding from Google, and there is certainly a great deal more funding available to academics from Microsoft than Google. That said, given that my point was about the absurdity in difference in responses to Microsoft’s actions and Google’s actions, I’m particularly amused(?) that here we are, in a page about Google applying for patents that would cover a tremendous amount of essential CS research, and the primary thrust of your points here seems to be “Dude! Google’s Awesome! They’re so supportive of research!” which is pretty much exactly the response I was trying to highlight. Don’t be evil was a wonderful way to start their branding. It doesn’t matter that’s not the company they are anymore, it’s still how people think of them.
        • doctorsher 8y ago
          You are trying to frame people's responses into a "Google good, Microsoft bad" response, and I do not think that is fair to them at all. They are disagreeing with your idea that Google is non-existent on the academic research front, and Microsoft is doing way more than them. And frankly, as someone in academia, this does not pass my smell test either.
          • yodon 8y ago
            I’m baffled where you get the idea that I think google is non-existent on the academic front. Yes, Apple is not-existent, but that’s certainly not something I believe or would say about google, because it’s not the case. I did say Microsoft is the #1 funder of academic research in the world, which I believe is still true and which no one seems to be challenging [edit: it looks like there is some discussion of whether Microsoft’s funding is bigger or smaller than the government’s contribution, but all within a context of Microsoft certainly being the biggest NGO funding source and possibly being the biggest overall] Again, I think it’s fascinating how in commenting on a post about google trying to file patents that would completely control the most important new field in CS, someone who correctly points out that Google is not #1 in funding academic researchers is branded as calling Google “non-existent on the academic front”. This is precisely the sort of unproductive back and forth argument that the HN software is designed to discourage and punish, so I’m going to try to back off here and say hopefully we can agree to disagree, particularly since it doesn’t sound to me like we actually disagree.
            • doctorsher 8y ago
              I admit that I exaggerated with my wording that you think Google is non-existent on the academic front. It's unfortunate that your response focuses almost entirely on this one aspect, and not the message my post attempted to convey. > someone who correctly points out that Google is not #1 in funding academic researchers This type of wording is unnecessary. You are declaring that you are correct, while at the same time not providing supporting evidence when requested. > This is precisely the sort of unproductive back and forth argument that the HN software is designed to discourage and punish Welp. I am sorry this had such a negative effect on you. We can certainly agree to disagree. Cheers.
      • doctorsher 8y ago
        I was going to link to exactly the same thing. Only considering these 2017 faculty research awards, that is over $22 million awarded to academic research. Not to mention Google frequently uses the model where professors work at google for a summer / semester / year on a funded project, but are not permanent employees.
    • ehsankia 8y ago
      Even if it was, publishing paper is still contributing to academic research. How is contributing yourself somehow worse than just putting your stamp on other people's work?
  • deleted 8y ago
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• halflings 8y ago
  > unlike competing companies like Google and Apple they encourage academic researchers to publish papers on the work they fund First, you cannot compare Google and Apple when it comes to academic research. Apple barely does any, Google is usually the largest source of papers in all major ML conferences (when it's not FB): NIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc.
  • yodon 8y ago
    I think you are confusing academic research and corporate research. Google has a huge stable of corporate researchers who publish papers in academic journals. Microsoft funds actual academic research. And yes, my inclusion of Apple in that list was fully aware Apple doesn’t do significant funding of academic research. That’s the point.
    • andreyk 8y ago
      To be fair the boundary between academic and industry research is quite gray now - lots of collaboration, many PhDs doing internships, etc. Still, it's true MS is not given enough credit.
    • ehsankia 8y ago
      So just because Google hires researcher and gives them resources, their publication is somehow worth less than Microsoft paying outside researchers? Why is one somehow superior than the other? Both are publishing papers and pushing academia forward, why does it matter where the researcher are doing their work?
    • halflings 8y ago
      Frankly, when I read a machine learning paper without looking at the list of authors, it is impossible to tell whether it is written by "corporate researchers" or "actual academic researchers". I'm not sure the distinction you're making is really helpful. As long as the research is published openly, peer-reviewed, discussed in conferences, whether the researchers work for the company or for a university does not make much of a difference. Most of these "corporate researchers" were top of their field in academia before joining Google, Facebook, Microsoft. Furthermore, Google also funds academic research [0]... I'm not even sure where you're getting all your information at this point. [0] https://ai.google/research/outreach/faculty-research-awards/recipients/ https://ai.google/research/outreach/faculty-research-awards/...
• mtgx 8y ago
  Microsoft is also one of the largest patent royalty extortionists in the industry. Can you imagine if Microsoft had these patents? Every single internet-connected device with "AI capabilities" would be paying Microsoft a royalty within 3 years after the company would obtain the patents.
  • kyrra 8y ago
    As a reminder, Microsoft made a few billion dollars from Android for patents. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-android-patent-income/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft...
• jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Google has just given back so much more than Microsoft. Great example is Google dominates with Android and Chrome the client and server and creates SPDY and gives it away. Heck it was changed and they even switch from SPDY to http2. Or a big one is MpegLA was commiting basically extortion and Google created VP8 and gave away for free. But then did a crazy thing of even giving people that use for free protection from patent infringement. Who does that? That is why we do not pay what we had to for mpeg2 licenses. Just not aware of similar from MS? Or a big one is Google finding Shellshock, Spectre, Cloudbleed, Heartbleed, Meltdown and others. MS has so much to lose and does not find anywhere near what Google does to help the entire industry. Plus Google even shares mitigations. Instead Google finds MS vulnerabilities and gives them 90 days and MS b*thches about it instead of thanking. But then all the papers of things that are now just defacto standards. Like GFS, Map/reduce, Bigtable, Borg with K8s and just so many more. Some are ways we now do things. Then all the source code they give away.
• doctorsher 8y ago
  What is your source that Microsoft funds more CS research than the US Government? Let's ignore any DoE, DARPA, or NIH sources of funding, and just focus on the NSF. The computer science portion of their budget is almost one billion dollars.
  • throwawayjava 8y ago
    > What is your source that Microsoft funds more CS research than the US Government? Microsoft reported spending $14 billion on R&D in 2017. That year, NSF's CISE budget was somewhere around $950 million. The comparison is apples and oranges, because NSF is funding public research and a lot of basic research, whereas one must assume the vast majority of that $14B at Microsoft is spent on the D portion of R&D. Still, though, MSR is one of the more prolific research institutions in CS. If they were a university, they'd probably be top-ranked.
    • doctorsher 8y ago
      Still, though, MSR is one of the more prolific research institutions in CS. If they were a university, they'd probably be top-ranked. I definitely agree. They have some top notch researchers, certainly. I also agree that the budget comparison is apples and oranges, so I'm not quite sure why you brought it up. The OP made a grandiose claim about Microsoft's academic research funding, and made it quite clear with his discussion of Google that corporate research does not count. So I want a source for the amount of money Microsoft spends on pure academic research without the corporate ties. Personally, I think if Microsoft spent anywhere close to a billion dollars on pure academic research, the funding situation in CS academia would be completely different. Microsoft grants would be pursued just as hard as NSF grants, because they would be such a major funding source. But that is not the case. Corporate grants are afterthoughts compared to the NSF for academics. 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.
      • throwawayjava 8y ago
• Volt 8y ago
  Researchers at MSR can't publish everything they work on, you know. In a sense, MSR is also a patent mill. Sure they fund research and a good deal of it is published, but it's not simply out of the goodness of their hearts.
  • yodon 8y ago
    The comment was about academic researchers being encouraged to publish, not MSR researchers. People who work for MSR are Microsoft employees and therefore are corporate researchers not academic researchers.
• mda 8y ago
  Microsoft shakes down tens of companies with bogus patents, Google does not. That is one comparison you are forgetting.
• jacksmith21006 8y ago
  The big difference is Microsoft uses patents to get royalities out of people and use as a weapon in slowing down the industry versus helping push the industry forward. Google does not play that game. They have tons of patents and purchased patents for cross license but they do not get paid anything in royalities. Instead they give away IP for everyone to use. That is why Microsoft gets paid more for every Android handset through royalaties from patents than Google does. Just a different approach between the two companies.