I agree that Microsoft wastes resources on research. Normally, I love the idea of private companies funding research, but Microsoft has a habit of not using its research for anything commercial. Instead, they file for thousands of patents and just sit on them.<p>I feel the same way about Google - by spending their vast profits on hiring more smart people than they need (instead of say, giving a dividend out to shareholders), they do a disservice to the entire industry. Smart engineers and researchers are relatively rare, and shouldn't be sitting in some research building writing up papers that will never produce a dollar - that's what Universities are for. Instead, they should be out there starting companies and heading the engineering teams at small to medium companies.<p>It's almost tragic to the tech industry that Microsoft and Google are so profitable.