I'm not sure what "corporate research labs of old" did differently from what Google Research, Microsoft Research, or FAIR do. They are all significant investmen

I'm not sure what "corporate research labs of old" did differently from what Google Research, Microsoft Research, or FAIR do. They are all significant investments in personnel and equipment by these firms, and produce fundamental research and are arguably as good as the best universities in the world at it (if not better at some things owing to sheer scale). A lot of MSR's work isn't even directly applicable, people work on theoretical computer science and optimization theory while being permanent researchers there. Similar cases exist across the industry.