In 1970 Xerox snapped up most of the top engineers from dozens of silicon valley companies, and was roundly hated EVERYWHERE. Thus began a decade of great rese

In 1970 Xerox snapped up most of the top engineers from dozens of silicon valley companies, and was roundly hated EVERYWHERE. Thus began a decade of great research but even greater hype ... But after 12 years of failing to capitalize on all the technologies invented at PARC and Office Systems Division - from 1983 to 1987 - Xerox experienced a mass exodus itself and many researchers in Computer Science joined Dec Systems Research Center or DEC Western research Lab (DEC SRC and DEC WRL). The latter (DEC WRL) was credited with developing the DEC Alpha CPU; DEC SRC invented Altavista which was the #1 search engine until Google arrived. I was an Office Systems Division engineer 1984-6 and watched the exodus unfold before I left for grad school. Overall DEC SRC/WRL didn't have as much impact as PARC; there is a time and place for everything and that kind of systems research - its time had passed ..