I do remember the good stuff MSR has done, but does it justify the cost? Microsoft has probably spent about half its current market capitalization on MSR (very

I do remember the good stuff MSR has done, but does it justify the cost? Microsoft has probably spent about half its current market capitalization on MSR (very rough estimate based on its budget for the last few years: 7-8 billion, and the fact that it has existed for 18 years. I think it's safe to assume that they have spent >75 billion on research since MSR's conception.) Even if half of this is justified (a generous estimate), Microsoft has lost a quarter of its value to useless research! This is not the norm at most companies. Normally, I think research is a great thing (I did research in grad school), but not the way MSR does. They take some of the brightest minds in the industry and have them work on "products" that never see the light of day, and then patent their papers. Microsoft engineers do most of the revenue generating work. C# could have been created outside of MSR.