[yodon]

Nearly all the authors in that list are google employees, not independent academic researchers.

That blog post is about Google’s employees publishing papers on work google owns, the same sort of work that google is attempting to secure patents on. This is very different from supporting independent academic research.

[haeffin]

Supporting independent academic research like https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/03/google-faculty-research-aw...?

[yodon]

Everything I’ve heard from academics is that the terms that come with funding from Microsoft are much better and more flexible for the academic than the terms that come with funding from Google, and there is certainly a great deal more funding available to academics from Microsoft than Google.

That said, given that my point was about the absurdity in difference in responses to Microsoft’s actions and Google’s actions, I’m particularly amused(?) that here we are, in a page about Google applying for patents that would cover a tremendous amount of essential CS research, and the primary thrust of your points here seems to be “Dude! Google’s Awesome! They’re so supportive of research!” which is pretty much exactly the response I was trying to highlight. Don’t be evil was a wonderful way to start their branding. It doesn’t matter that’s not the company they are anymore, it’s still how people think of them.

[shoyer]

If you look at Google's Faculty Research Award page (https://ai.google/research/outreach/faculty-research-awards/), the awards are described as "unrestricted gifts." I'm not sure how it gets more flexible than that.

Disclaimer: I work for Google.

[doctorsher]

You are trying to frame people's responses into a "Google good, Microsoft bad" response, and I do not think that is fair to them at all. They are disagreeing with your idea that Google is non-existent on the academic research front, and Microsoft is doing way more than them. And frankly, as someone in academia, this does not pass my smell test either.

[yodon]

I’m baffled where you get the idea that I think google is non-existent on the academic front. Yes, Apple is not-existent, but that’s certainly not something I believe or would say about google, because it’s not the case. I did say Microsoft is the #1 funder of academic research in the world, which I believe is still true and which no one seems to be challenging [edit: it looks like there is some discussion of whether Microsoft’s funding is bigger or smaller than the government’s contribution, but all within a context of Microsoft certainly being the biggest NGO funding source and possibly being the biggest overall]

Again, I think it’s fascinating how in commenting on a post about google trying to file patents that would completely control the most important new field in CS, someone who correctly points out that Google is not #1 in funding academic researchers is branded as calling Google “non-existent on the academic front”.

This is precisely the sort of unproductive back and forth argument that the HN software is designed to discourage and punish, so I’m going to try to back off here and say hopefully we can agree to disagree, particularly since it doesn’t sound to me like we actually disagree.

[doctorsher]

I admit that I exaggerated with my wording that you think Google is non-existent on the academic front. It's unfortunate that your response focuses almost entirely on this one aspect, and not the message my post attempted to convey.

> someone who correctly points out that Google is not #1 in funding academic researchers

This type of wording is unnecessary. You are declaring that you are correct, while at the same time not providing supporting evidence when requested.

> This is precisely the sort of unproductive back and forth argument that the HN software is designed to discourage and punish

Welp. I am sorry this had such a negative effect on you. We can certainly agree to disagree. Cheers.

[jacksmith21006]

Depends on what you consider "bad" versus "good".

But Microsoft getting patents to use for royalties or as a weapon to me is not as good as the Google approach.

Google does not use patents to get royalties but instead gives away tons of IP to help everyone or the entire industry move forward.

[dang]

Since we asked you to stop using HN to prosecute agendas about Google and you've posted dozens of comments since then doing exactly what we asked you not to do, I've banned this account.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with saying nice or critical things about $Bigco on Hacker News, be it Google or anyone else. But when it becomes both predictable and proliferating, it stops serving intellectual curiosity and that violates the purpose of this site. You crossed that line a long time ago, unfortunately.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[haeffin]

I'm not saying "Google's Awesome!". My point is that the view you presented is far more biased than what I get from my colleagues and friends that stayed in academia. People running around like headless chickens in the "MS buys GitHub" thread was unfounded, and it is unfounded here.

[jacksmith21006]

Yodon, The difference is Google gets the patents so nobody else can and does NOT use as a weapon or for royalities.

Microsoft just takes a different approach. They use the patents for royalities and how they make over a billion off of Android phones a year.

Google has tons of patents and even buys them up like what they did with Moto. Yet they do not charge royalities for using. They instead use for cross license agreements.

Just a very different culture from Microsoft.

But one of my favorite examples of Google and patents is VP8.

We had Mpeg-LA extorting license fees out of us for Mpeg2. Google said enough and created VP8 and gave away for free for anyone to use.

But then in addition also offered patent infringement protection for anyone using VP8. That is just not an approach you would see from Microsoft.

"It doesn’t matter that’s not the company they are anymore "

What has changed? I would say they are giving back more now than ever before. They use to give their "secrets" in papers like Map/Reduce, GFS, and so many others.

But now they actually give the software away with their "secrets". Perfect example is Kubernettes. They build Borg and learned from it and then with everything they learned now give away K8s.

Which is now used by Microsoft, Amazon and pretty much the entire industry. They do not charge a cent and help their competitors better compete against them.

They did it because it helps the entire industry move forward. That is just not the culture at Microsoft.

Google continues to give away just tons and tons of IP.

But you do have me curious. How do you think they have changed in terms of the technology community?

BTW, another example is giving away SPDY which became http2 which helped everyone including competitors.

Or all the money they spend finding all the major security flaws including Shellshock Meltdown, Cloudbleed, HeartBleed, Spectre and many others. Cloudbleed was with a competitor and helped them solve the issue.

Google finds many Microsoft vulnerabilities and tells them about them helping them make their products more secure.

[doctorsher]

I was going to link to exactly the same thing. Only considering these 2017 faculty research awards, that is over $22 million awarded to academic research. Not to mention Google frequently uses the model where professors work at google for a summer / semester / year on a funded project, but are not permanent employees.

[ehsankia]

Even if it was, publishing paper is still contributing to academic research. How is contributing yourself somehow worse than just putting your stamp on other people's work?