[greggarious]

This article seems a bit hyperbolic.

Yes, the Silicon Valley branch has shut down, but MSR's main office in Washington is still open and doing great research. It's probably the best industrial lab that's still running.

I also have interned at PARC (no longer "Xerox PARC", but still kicking). I was given remarkable freedom both by my direct supervisor and the division manager.

Down the road, HP labs was still going (though a few of their staff had migrated to PARC). Likewise, IBM and Bell Labs still are going.

And Google seems to be really spinning up their research. I won't comment on specifics in a public forum, but I've noticed signals that they're taking basic research seriously. (They used to be very short term, product oriented)

[anonetal]

I agree that MSR is probably the best CS industrial lab out there right now, but I think Moshe's point is that even the rest of the MSR is probably a bit wary right now given what (and how it) happened to MSR SV. I don't think HP, IBM, and Bell Labs (with a few specific and localized exceptions) are doing basic research as they were doing a few years ago (or in Bell Lab's case, a few decades ago). Maybe you are right about Google, but generally speaking, there are very few papers from Google Research (relative to their strength).

[DrDimension]

Agree. It matters because nothing undermines scientific integrity and productivity like financial insecurity.

[Qworg]

There's also many other MSR labs in many other places: China, Cambridge, Israel, Egypt, Munich, others. Redmond is the just the biggest.

I believe that the SV cut was the right choice vs. "spreading the pain around", but we'll see how it shapes up in the end.

[walshemj]

And not all RnD labs are CS the same retreat from RnD can be seen in a branches of STEM unfortunately.