Microsoft Corp. is creating a research lab devoted solely to developing Internet technology, as part of efforts to move products to market faster and better compete with rivals such as Google and Yahoo.
Microsoft introduced the efforts — Live Labs and Search Labs — recently at its Search Champs meeting in Redmond, Washington, according to Adam Sohn, a company spokesman for Microsoft’s MSN division. Search Champs is an event to solicit feedback from industry experts and pundits, including prominent bloggers, on some of Microsoft’s newest technology.
MSN and Microsoft Research co-found applied research la
b; Live Labs and Silicon Valley Search Labs will lead the next evolution of innovation in Internet products and services.
Microsoft Live Labs; will be a partnership between Microsoft’s MSN Internet product group and its research arm. Unlike traditional Microsoft Research labs, which are given leeway to take on academic-type research into far-flung fields, the goal of Live Labs is to create new products and tough competitors.
Live Labs will function under the leadership of Dr. Gary William Flake, noted industry technologist and Microsoft technical fellow who joined the company from Yahoo in June 2005. Live Labs will consist of a dedicated group of researchers from MSN and Microsoft Research that will work with researchers across Microsoft and the academic research community. Live Labs will provide consistency in vision, leadership and infrastructure as well as a nimble applied research environment that fosters rapid innovations. Search Labs will be run by Ashok Chandra, an industry researcher and academic who joined Microsoft a few weeks ago.
Live Labs is a fantastic alliance between some of the best engineering and scientific talent in the world. It will be the pre-eminent applied research laboratory for Internet technologies, Flake said. This is a very exciting opportunity for researchers and technologists to have an immediate impact on the next evolution of Microsoft’s Internet products and services and will help unify our customers’ digital world so they can easily find information, pursue their interests and enrich their lives.
Microsoft hopes the collaboration will result in useful products that are also cutting-edge, said Flake, a Microsoft technical fellow who will head up the project.
Its goal is to hit the sweet spot in the middle between science and engineering, where each is … better together, he said.
The move comes as Microsoft is facing intense competition from companies including Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in Internet-based business and consumer applications. Microsoft has been criticized for lagging behind in key areas such as search technology, and some have questioned whether its massive size has inhibited it from moving nimbly enough in such a rapidly changing technology sector.
Live Labs, which will be a group effort of researchers located around the world, will be focused on applied research of technologies such as multimedia search, distributed computing and data mining, Sohn said. The point of Live Labs is to get prototypes and new products developed as quickly as possible if the research reveals they will give the company or customers a competitive advantage, he said.
If someone comes up with a super-hot idea… we will have a bunch of researchers/developers who can take those ideas, get them prototyped and see if there is a real, healthy business there, he said.
Search Labs, which will be stationed on Microsoft’s campuses in Redmond, Washington, and Mountain View, California, will focus exclusively on developing and incubating new search technologies, Sohn said. Focus areas for this team will be personalization and socialization, improved user experience and user privacy, among others.
Microsoft also said that it was creating a related organization, Search Labs, to focus solely on improving methods for Internet search. Earlier this month, Microsoft also unveiled adLab, a research effort focused on the lucrative field of Internet advertising.
Microsoft currently is battling Internet service companies such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. to win over online users with Web-based content and services that can be accessed by myriad devices. These services generate ad revenue and other revenue opportunities through deals with major content providers.
Google in particular has been churning out new Internet-based services in rapid succession, with a host of new offerings such as Google Video, Google Pack as well as the first launch of its search service in China, all introduced in just the last month.
Sohn said that while Microsoft’s MSN has not been "sitting around twiddling our thumbs" when it comes to developing Internet-based services, the company does want to speed up the development and deployment of cutting-edge services on the Web. "It makes absolute sense for us to deeply focus research efforts in this area to be more agile and accelerate the development work we are doing," he said.
Matt Rosoff, an analyst with independent researchers Directions on Microsoft, said the moves are not unusual in that Microsoft has been forging closer relationship between its researchers and its product groups, in the hopes of cashing in on the work of some of its brightest minds. But he said the fact that the company is putting so much emphasis on Internet technology shows that it does not want to again be in the position of missing the boat on the next round of online technology advances.
Seeking to rebut those criticisms, Microsoft last year announced a major strategy shift to focus on Internet-based software and services. The goal of the shift, which includes initiatives dubbed Windows Live and Office Live; are to create online products to complement cash cows such as its Windows operating system and Office business software.
This complements the company’s continuing deep investment in basic research at Microsoft Research and product development at MSN.
While Google and Yahoo both started as Internet-based companies, Microsoft comes from a tradition of packaged software, which is by its nature a slower business than the Web. Even in that realm, Microsoft has never been known as particularly speedy; the company typically has anywhere from two-year to five-year product cycles for its packaged software.
To ensure Live Labs research is in line with company product and strategy goals, a group of Microsoft’s chief technologists will serve as the advisory board for the effort, Sohn said. Those executives include Microsoft Chief Technical Officer (CTO) Ray Ozzie, Craig Mundie, CTO of Advanced Strategies and Policy, as well as David Vaskevitch, CTO of Business Platforms.
Ozzie sees Live Labs as an agile environment for fast-tracking research from the lab into people’s hands. "Live Labs is taking an exciting approach that is both organic and consumer-driven," Ozzie said. "Within the context of a broad range of rich usage scenarios for Windows Live, the labs will explore new ways of bringing content, commerce and community to the Internet."
Through Live Labs, Microsoft also is supporting the academic research community at large, Sohn said. The company expects to do much of the labs’ work in the open and will present papers on research at academic conferences, he said.
A Breadth of Research Areas
Live Labs will investigate a broad and comprehensive set of research topics such as multimedia search, machine learning, distributed computing and data mining, and will engage in rapid prototyping and the incubation of disruptive technologies. Live Labs’ applied research will study the relationship and applicability of theories or principles to the solution of a problem or an actual product or service.
Search Labs in Silicon Valley
Microsoft also announced the hiring of Dr. Ashok Chandra, a notable industry and academic researcher, as general manager of Search Labs, a new organization devoted to innovation and incubation that will be closely aligned with Live Labs. Search Labs will be stationed in Redmond and at the Microsoft Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, Calif. Search Labs will focus on areas such as personalization, socialization and improved user experiences while maintaining strict regard for user privacy. In addition, Chandra’s teams will build technologies for data mining, vertical industries and parametric capabilities to go beyond the search bar experience.
Live Labs: Committed to World-Class Research and Open Publication
Because strong academic engagement with the research community is fundamental to the lab’s overall goals, Live Labs’ scientists and technologists are encouraged to actively and openly engage with the academic research community and publish their research findings.
Many of Live Labs’ founding members are highly regarded Microsoft Research scientists who have been longtime MSN collaborators. These include Dr. Eric Brill, senior researcher and the head of the Text Mining, Search and Navigation Group; Dr. Paul Viola, senior researcher in the Document Processing and Understanding Group; Dr. Susan Dumais, senior researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group; Dr. Jim Gray, Microsoft technical fellow and head of the Scalable Servers Research Group; Dr. Christopher Bishop, assistant director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England; and Dr. Chris Meek and Dr. Max Chickering, senior researchers in the Machine Learning and Applied Statistics Group.
Supporting the Academic Research Community
Beyond collaboration, Live Labs will extend Microsoft’s existing engagement with the external academic research community through new opportunities for grants, sabbaticals, internships and fellowships. As one example, Live Labs announced that a total of $500,000 (U.S.) is being made available through a new request for proposals to further encourage academic research in areas such as data mining, discovery and analysis as they relate to Internet search.
Proposals can be submitted through March 24. Microsoft will make 10 to 14 awards ranging from $35,000 to $50,000 and will announce the awards on May 17.
In addition, Microsoft of late awarded to 10 outstanding students two-year fellowships worth a total of $1,000,000 (U.S.), as well as the opportunity to do an internship on the topic of their choice.
This indicates Microsoft’s long-term commitment to this field, said Michael Gartenberg with Jupiter Research. Certainly they are not content with their position in the marketplace.
More information about Live Labs can be found at the Web at http://labs.live.com.