
How Microsoft Plans to Beat Google and Facebook to the Next Tech Breakthrough - Qworg
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-microsoft-research/
======
melted
Microsoft has suffered a heck of a brain drain in the past decade. I don't
believe they can recover from it in the long term. I also don't believe in
innovation by executive edict. Google and FB models work because executive
edicts are not necessary there: top researchers and engineers run the whole
show.

~~~
Joof
Microsoft research is nearly legendary in many academic circles. As
prestigious as many top colleges. There are many brilliant people working
there.

Admittadely, the prestige probably has a lot to do with the previous
circumstances (work on whatever, don't worry about the company), but it seems
like this will be a very beneficial move for Microsoft.

~~~
melted
Research, yes. But Research alone can't pull this off. And most of the rest of
the company can't tell logistic regression from a hole in the ground.

~~~
yeukhon
Almost nearly every single successful Google products were either developed
out of research or out of 20%, or via acquisition. Most in-house business
projects don't end up successful (Google Plus?) A big company has to invest
heavily in R&D to push the limit. You just need one big idea that works and
become a game changer.

~~~
melted
At Google most in-house projects are infrastructural, and if you look at the
scale at which they run and the fact that there's basically nothing that even
comes close, they are wildly successful. You could also say Android was in-
house, because what they bought is not at all what they ended up shipping.
What they bought looked like a Blackberry rip-off, what they ended up shipping
was an iPhone rip-off. And let us not forget Ads, the in-house system that has
dominated online advertising for a decade now.

But I kind of fail to see what any of this has to do with Microsoft. :-)

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orionblastar
Good luck because great minds think alike. Getting a product idea finished and
out to market takes time, and competitors might be able to do it faster.

Skype Translate reminds me of the Star Trek universal translator but it can
only do several languages. I remember when Babelfish came out and some
translations didn't take too well. There has always been a need for a computer
to translate foreign languages and to translate accurately as well.

I think Apple is trying to do the same things as Microsoft for their iPhone
and Macintosh series. So Microsoft has to compete with Apple too to get new
ideas to market.

It is a shame that Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple can't work together to
share ideas and see which ones does them best.

~~~
jeffjose
If anything, the race to attract top minds has actually forced these companies
to open source their proprietary libraries. (TensorFlow, CNTK etc). While they
might not be working together, there's definitely a greater good that has
happened as a side-effect. I'd argue that the open sourcing of libraries is
better than 2 big companies working secretly.

------
pavs
What does Tech breakthrough in this context means? And what tech breakthrough
came from Facebook?

Is something like HHVM considered a tech breakthrough?

Automated self driving cars considered a tech breakthrough? (most probably)

~~~
yid
> Is something like HHVM considered a tech breakthrough?

A largely backwards source-compatible, JIT'ed interpreter for one of the
world's shittiest designed but most widely deployed languages? That runs the
frontend fleet for the #2 site on the Web? While supporting new core language
features and extensions? Yes, I would say that's a breakthrough in interpreter
implementation, and thus tech.

------
frik
Pretty good analysis of MSFT, Google and Facebook. In the 1990s Bill Gates
shared his visions in 1990 and 1994 at COMDEX (information at your fingertips
and "Cairo"). In the 2000s Longhorn, WinFS (failed because dotNet was too
slow) and the great work of Microsoft Labs like Photosynth. MSFT was on its
peak with Office 2010 and Win7. Though then they closed their Labs department.
And Satya Nadella only tries to milks the custumer with SaaS versions of their
former on-premises software, expensive license model changes and hostile
privacy intrusive spying stuff on end consumer. MSFT is such a mean company.

~~~
melted
WinFS failed not because .NET was too slow, but because no one, not even the
people in charge of WinFS, could explain why the fuck anyone would want
something like this. I also don't get what's so great about Photosynth. Last I
checked it completely failed to take off anywhere.

~~~
Peaker
For the same reason we want "locate". Except it would be nice to be able to
query on many more attributes. And without having the machine be unresponsive
for a while every day, only to find that "updatedb" decided to churn the
machine.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Have you tried mlocate? It has a much more sane updatedb, reading only the
changes to the filesystem.

[https://fedorahosted.org/mlocate/](https://fedorahosted.org/mlocate/)

------
AndrewKemendo
I have to say that our team has been really impressed with Microsoft from a
developer perspective.

They were very accommodating with bringing us in to see/try the Hololens and
we have been really happy with Azure since switching from AWS.

~~~
nitrogen
They seem to have had that strategy for a very long time -- entice developers
to lock in end users. It worked quite well obviously, but I myself still find
a good REPL, solid CLI tools, and fully open source code all the way down to
the BIOS even more enticing.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft's "next" is; they've tried a lot
of "nexts" that didn't always pan out.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Yea except 100% of our end users are on iOS. We have no intentions on building
for Windows Phone or Windows OS and they know that.

~~~
kozukumi
> We have no intentions on building for Windows Phone or Windows OS and they
> know that

That is the biggest change in Microsoft IMHO. Talking from personal experience
- in the past whenever we worked with MS they always put in stupid
requirements such as we _had_ to support X or Y (with X and Y being some new
Microsoft technology/platform/product).

It was abuse of their position so I am glad to see this is changing.

~~~
dev360
Yeah I was in total shock yesterday when I found out they are phasing out app
fabric caching in favor of REDIS. Glad times are finally catching up to them,
but it feels so much like Sun.. Too little, too late.

------
gottam
Microsoft's independent innovations of the last decade are the kind the
average person doesn't really want or need. They're making a skype
translator... fantastic... but the market for that is still pretty niche.

When Google released maps/street view, or apple announced the iphone, those
were the kinds of things that built excitement because they were big ideas,
and it was the kind of future we wanted to live in. Microsoft doesn't really
do that, and from this article they still don't get it.

~~~
Udik
And at the beginning of the multi-touch revolution, while Apple was releasing
the iPhone, Microsoft was still busy developing Surface (now PixelSense) - an
80kg, 50x50cm coffee table cum multitouch screen. Really. So I agree with you,
it seems that impressive products of Microsoft research look like proofs of
concept rather then viable mass products.

~~~
krylon
> it seems that impressive products of Microsoft research look like proofs of
> concept rather then viable mass products.

Isn't that kind of the point of having a research division? Let the research
people go crazy with new ideas, then sift through them and figure out what to
make of that, product-wise?

It's not like MS Research hasn't delivered some cool stuff, but Microsoft was
either not capable or not interested in turning that stuff into products. At
least that is the impression I get.

~~~
gottam
The biggest thing I can think of that MS research delivered in the last few
years is the kinect. They hinged a lot upon that being the next thing in
gaming, but what is it now really? Their competitors aren't exactly in a rush
to copy it... because once again, its a gimmick for a niche market.

Now just look at VR on the other hand... there's many big companies investing
in that and there's a lot of hype around it. Heck even Facebook is on board
and Microsoft is nowhere to be seen. There's yet another technological
revolution that they're missing out on.

~~~
WorldMaker
The connective fabric is that Microsoft has _always_ been investing in VR, or
at least AR/Holograms: the Surface Table/PixelSense was a step towards
physically touching digital spaces, the Kinect was a step towards physically
touching digital spaces, the HoloLens will be a step towards physically
touching digital spaces. All of those steps have learned from the past steps
and build on sensors and software built for the previous step. (Crudely, the
Kinect moved the table's sensors into a platform that could be attached to an
Xbox and the HoloLens is now strapping those sensors to your face.)

I don't think that Microsoft is missing out on the VR revolution: I think that
all this time Microsoft has been trying to baby step/bootstrap their way
towards some very cool things. I think it's useful to take a step back and
appreciate the incremental/evolutionary approach Microsoft has been taking
here. I still think it's kind of brilliant that MS/MSR was able to use gaming
to commoditize the Kinect (what was a lab's worth of sensors is now available
in every Wal-Mart for a reasonable cost).

~~~
Seventhson74
Is anyone here aware of Hololens? I am not understanding why people are
claiming ms is missing out on the vr revolution, unless you consider AR to be
so wildly different that it doesn't qualify as similar?

------
petke
As a developer I noticed lately there is an impressive number of libraries
coming from ms. They probably have a hundred libraries just on github and many
older ones on codeplex. I hope this new practical money making focus doesn't
mean those libraries will get neglected. Part of the charm with ms is that
they are not as calculating and ruthlessly capitalist as apple and google.
They are more focused on the developer and researcher than the user. I hope
they don't end up becoming the same.

~~~
nitrogen
_Part of the charm with ms is that they are not as calculating and ruthlessly
capitalist as apple and google. They are more focused on the developer and
researcher than the user. I hope they don 't end up becoming the same._

I take it you weren't in the industry when the Halloween documents leaked, or
the antitrust case was prosecuted. MS was (and probably still is) every bit as
ruthlessly capitalistic as the new 800lb gorillas in town.

~~~
petke
The ms is evil thing is very 90s. It doesn't look so bad compared to say
facebook and google who's core business is advertisement. Those will sell your
personal information to 3rd parties any chance they get. Ms core business is
still about selling software and services to users. In my book thats a more
honest way to make a living. I hope it stays that way. Apple is another story
..

------
shrewduser
I really don't think that the problem with microsoft was their research
division being too seperate. although interfacing better with the rest of the
company makes sense they've always fallen on their face when it comes to
execution, they were a real player in the smartphone sector at one point for
example.

figure out how to execute on your ideas, the generation of ideas themselves
aren't the issue.

------
sixQuarks
Question from non-technical person: What script is used to do the headline
scramble? What process do you use to find out what script it is? thanks

~~~
lucideer
It's entirely custom but it leverages the d3 library so it's quite
short/relatively simple in its execution as it leaves most of it up to d3.

Process for finding out is not fixed. Generally a simple "View Source", look
at <script> tags, read script files and look for obvious clues is the best
first port of call (and worked easily here). If there's a lot of indirection
and pre-compilation being done it gets harder.

~~~
sixQuarks
thanks, appreciate the response. I had a hunch it was with d3, but wasn't
sure.

------
dekhn
Any time a CEO of a company this size has to make a last-minute forced
integration between groups in their company to catch up with a competitor, it
means the CEO failed at their real job: anticipating their competitor, and
being prepared with a response.

If CEOs are micro-managing tactics like this, it means they are failing to
hire and delegate.

~~~
josephpmay
Granted, it was a very different CEO that failed to anticipate their
competition

------
josep2
Sincerely hope this is the case.

------
hackaflocka
Headlines like this are good for a mid-day laugh.

Operative phrase: "Plans to."

Two words Microsoft needs to learn before it tries anything: "Strategy tax."

~~~
meagain20000
Since I'm not familiar with the term could you explain it like I'm five?

~~~
BarkMore
Strategy tax is where an individual product is constrained in some way to
further the overall goals of the company. For example, Microsoft killed a
project to port SQL Server to Linux because the product would help to
strengthen Linux as a competitor to Windows.

The term has been used inside Microsoft since the 1990s (and maybe before that
time).

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
It's an interesting but misleading phrase, because it doesn't allow for the
fact that a bad strategy does nothing to further the overall goals of the
company - where a relaxation of a bad strategy does.

If your strategy is "Protect the crown jewels at all costs" while your
competitors have discovered a diamond mine, no one needs to care what cutlery
you're supposed to use.

Of course that sounds ludicrous, but the impression I get is that that kind of
strategic confusion has been endemic at MS since Gates moved on.

Clever innovations like Skype Translate or even Hololens are not a strategy.
Selling lots of good individual solutions still isn't a strategy.

You can't play defence on strategy (Office 2026? Windows Infinity?) You need a
kick-ass plan for the 5-10 year future, and I see no evidence that anyone at
MS is capable of designing a product plan for consumer markets that don't
exist yet, and then wondering how to market them - while Google, FB, Apple and
even Amazon are at least thinking about it.

~~~
Seventhson74
Wouldn't universal store across devices count? I mean it doesn't matter if you
sell X amount of phones or Xboxes or Desktops, you just need the # of devices
that have access to the store to give someone a reason to develop for it. I
don;t see anyone moving in that direction at all....

------
meesterdude
Microsoft could build a robot that did chores around the house for me, and I
still would have no interest in it. Because it's microsoft, and there is a lot
of baggage that goes along with that. This holds true for other large tech
companies as well - there is always baggage. It might be poor updates, crappy
support, no production quality, poor execution, poor security, or required
integration with their larger platform.

Yahoo is faced with a similar problem; they can't shake who they are, no
matter how cool or different they try to rebrand themselves. They're still
Yahoo. And nobody is interested.

I say this because MS seems to think that if they get a slamdunk on
technology, everything else will fall into place. And maybe there is some
truth to that. But you can't escape who you are and what you've done,
especially when it's become your M.O.

Facebook has an advantage in this space: they're still a new name in tech.
They're "hipper" although still have their own baggage; but it remains to be
seen how that permeates throughout what they do. So far it hasn't looked good
though.

Really, I think there is too much talent locked up in this major companies. I
think the world would be better off if more engineers and creatives were
forging their own paths, chasing their own dreams and coming to market
themselves. We need less whales and more/bigger fish.

~~~
jmspring
Facebook is a new name?

The review of the the pixel book got me thinking...

What do FB and GOOG have to prop up their valuation beyond advertising? In
both cases the user is the product, advertisers the customer.

Amazon, MSFT, and Apple have other avenues. It's always interesting how a past
reputation glosses of a legacy name is used to gloss over the behaviors of "a
new name".

~~~
bitmapbrother
What does Microsoft have besides Office/Windows? And what does Apple have
besides the iPhone?

~~~
jongalloway2
Here's a list circa 2013: [http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-16-billion-
dollar-bu...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-16-billion-dollar-
businesses-an-updated-list/)

~~~
bitmapbrother
The moment I saw XBOX I knew that list was suspect. And according to Ballmer
even the Azure numbers are cooked.

