[dnamlin]

Not really, to the extent that Bell Labs undertook true basic research for its own sake, without much concern for any short/medium-term commercial potential. (No need to rock the boat commercially, while the parent corporation had a regulated monopoly to milk!)

Maybe some case could be made for Alphabet's "Other Bets" collectively, but...the Bell Labs column has nine Nobel Prizes in it...

[graderjs]

Yes, that's one disadvantage of anti-trust...we miss this second-order effect :.(