Comment 2SW9 Re: Ballmer

Story

Microsoft staff cuts extend to Silicon Valley research lab

Preview

Ballmer (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-24 13:43 (#2SW7)

perhaps should have been yelling "R&D! R&D! R&D! R&D!"

What is the deal with huge companies having great lab projects that just never get "monetized" until the idea is picked up by someone else?

From Xerox PARC to Bell Labs to MS... They turned their tabletop "Surface" research into overpriced underwhelming touchscreen laptops, and their interesting "Courier" pad never saw the light of day. Now others are building touch tabletops and whiteboards, and of course iOS and Android own mobile touch computing. Some of their software projects (I recall a photo stitching effort) also reside in obscurity.

So of course now they start dumping one of the few areas of the company that really is an engine of innovation (contrary to all massive lip service applied to that "i" word by them and everyone else). Sigh.

Re: Ballmer (Score: 1)

by venkman@pipedot.org on 2014-09-24 15:21 (#2SW9)

AC, you should really log in because that was a good comment. I had forgotten about Courier, but now I remember how disappointed I was when they canned it. Chasing quarterly numbers makes a lot of these good, early-stage projects die on the vine.

Junk Status

Not marked as junk