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Amazon, Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, SpaceX, etc [1]. Just look at what companies are pumping 10's of billions of R&D dollars into. But, they are doing so

• ori_b 8y ago
  > Amazon, Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, SpaceX, etc [1]. Just look at what companies are pumping 10's of billions of R&D dollars into. What fundamental research are they pumping money into, regardless of imminent commercial promise? What set Bell Labs apart was the level of fudnamental "Well, we have no idea where this will go, but we can afford to throw some of our monopoly money at it" environment.
  • jplayer01 8y ago
    I'd say the only one really doing blue sky in any sense of the word is Microsoft. Most of their stuff in R&D never comes to market and is never intended to as its entire purpose.
    • ezoe 8y ago
      You mean, Windows?
      • ygra 8y ago
        Windows isn't exactly a Microsoft Research project ...
        • TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
          Not deliberately.
        • pjmlp 8y ago
          However, many technology stacks in use on Windows like WSL picoprocesses, .NET generics, MDIL later replaced by .NET Native, Secure Kernel, Z3 theorem prover for drivers, P language for Windows 8 USB stack, ... have their origins in MSR work.
  • chillee 8y ago
    I'd say things like AlphaGo are "fundamental research". Really, any of the top tier AI labs do what's often considered blue skies research, and have a huge concentration of talent. Microsoft also has a long legacy of funding a large variety of CS research.
    • ori_b 8y ago
      Bell labs didn't just do CS research, and the CS researchers weren't separated from the other researchers. The physicists worked with the chemists who worked with the computer scientists who worked with the theorists who worked with every other field.
  • coldtea 8y ago
    Xerox Parc fits your question, but the interesting parts of Bell Labs, i.e. the ones we use today (UNIX, C, etc) wasn't any "fundamental research" either.
    • AsyncAwait 8y ago
      > but the interesting parts of Bell Labs, i.e. the ones we use today (UNIX, C, etc) wasn't any "fundamental research" either. What about transistors? Don't we use them today?
      • coldtea 8y ago
        We do, but that's not the part of Bell Labs people usually reminisce about in a programming context or the era TFA talks about.
    • pjmlp 8y ago
      Actually had Bell Labs been allowed to sell UNIX and we most likely wouldn't be using it today.
  • rpeden 8y ago
    For Microsoft, at least, take a look at work done by Leslie Lamport and Simon Peyton Jones while working for Microsoft Research. Look at the papers they've published, and also what they work on - things like TLA+ for Lamport and Haskell for SPJ. I'd argue that both of these guys do interesting and important CS work that doesn't have an immediate commercial payoff for Microsoft. They're far from the only ones doing good CS research at MS; they're just the first that came to mind.
• atq2119 8y ago
  The list of companies you give doesn't quite work. Bell Labs and Xerox Parc were small organizations within a larger company. The vast majority of people in the companies you listed are doing work that has nowhere near the density of interestingness that happened in Xerox Parc, for example. There might be individual departments in those companies that are comparable -- in Microsoft Research perhaps, and a sibling comment points out Alpha Go. Anyway, the point is: Working at Alphabet or Intel or any of these is nothing like working at Xerox Parc, unless you happen to be in a very special place within those companies. But then, such special places are bound to exist elsewhere as well, in particular in small startups that are doing genuinely interesting things.