When you look at PARC's contributions (laser printer, bitmap graphics, GUI/windows/icons, WYSIWYG editor, Ethernet, OOP, MVC) or those of Bell Labs (transistor, laser, information theory, Unix, C & C++, radio astronomy), we haven't seen anything comparable from Google's Advanced Technology and Projects program. We can give them another 20-30 years and reassess, but so far, it's not there. Most of the projects have been announced with great fanfare and then quietly scrapped, or are solutions that haven't found problems.

PARC and Bell Labs were at the right place and right time to make fundamental contributions in the nascent areas of digital computers, software, and digital communications. They caught that wave perfectly. Now we're searching a similar revolutionary technology that will open the floodgates of innovation, but it's not apparent yet. Machine learning and AI? If that pans out, Google Brain/DeepMind would be well situated.

> we haven't seen anything comparable from Google's Advanced Technology and Projects program

And we won't because all those things have already been done.

The laser didn't come from Bell but from Hughes btw.

> PARC and Bell Labs were at the right place and right time to make fundamental contributions in the nascent areas of digital computers, software, and digital communications. They caught that wave perfectly.

Precisely.

> Now we're searching a similar revolutionary technology that will open the floodgates of innovation, but it's not apparent yet. Machine learning and AI? If that pans out, Google Brain/DeepMind would be well situated.

Machine learning is disruptive to a degree that the web never was. The web is augmentative, machine learning is pure disruption. Jobs that require lots of people will soon open up to automation, this is going to change the world in very fundamental ways if it keeps going at the rate that it does right now.

The last three years have seen one humans-only benchmark after another give way and the party is just getting started.

"> we haven't seen anything comparable from Google's Advanced Technology and Projects program

And we won't because all those things have already been done."

We haven't because they're not doing them that I've seen. I hope they prove me wrong as they're in a good position to be next PARC with some changes. So far, they've wowed me only once (TrueTime) with other stuff being variations on prior work with usually short-term focus or for pragmatic goals rather than vision. Their wide-eyed visions I've read about are rarely executed to completion. I don't see them as another PARC.

I 100% disagree. The web is far more significant than machine learning. Machine learning hasn't changed anything yet and I doubt it will ever significantly affect society.

Web has made society unrecognisable only 20 years later.

Unrecognisable means that if you take someone from 1997 and transport them into the present they wouldn't recognise today's society.

In reality societal changes in the past 20 years are superficial, so they would have no trouble recognising it.

I think that is a little unfair, unrecognisable would only really apply after a revolution/war, and even 1955 Germany would be recognisable to 1935 Germans (as one example).

To say that the changes have been merely superficial understates the case.

Online dating, online gaming, the disruption of existing media companies, Facebooks influence over the election, a president of the united states who tweets from the can, khan academy, youtube, the fact you can learn almost anything you can wish to learn by pulling a device out your pocket that is attached to an appreciable part of all human knowledge.

Computation on demand, I can pull out a credit card and have access to computing power that would have been unimaginable in 1997.

Social movements that have leveraged the web to achieve greater reach.

Those are things that mostly existed prior to 1997 but not in the sheer scope and reach that they do now.

The social changes in current teens who live an always connected life (I'm not sure that's a good thing but I'm 36, I'm too old to judge without it sounding like 'back in my day').

I think when it comes to the web things are just getting started, the utility of the network is so great that barring the fall of civilisation I can't see it ever going away and the impact will just keep growing and we'll just keep connecting more and more stuff to it until it becomes a planetary zeitgeist.

The changes you mention are almost invisible in day to day life though, so there's nothing to recognise.

Perhaps those innovations which the tech community considers revolutionary didn't really change society in a recognisable way?

Unrecognisable is a bit dramatic.

I've been around somewhat longer than that, I don't really think much has changed. People still want the same sorts of things and do the same sorts of thing.

> I don't really think much has changed.

I think that is the trap of having been there through the changes, you are acclimatised to them, for what it's worth I was born 1980 and also was around during the birth and the web and I do think much has changed.

For some reason, I love reading stories about Bell labs. Even though I wasn't alive back then, I look at it with nostalgia. Richard Hamming's "You and your research" talk is awesome and gives a good perspective about how the environment used to be back then.

There was an interesting post on HN years ago about why Google isn't a modern day Bell Labs. [1]

A common sentiment on the thread was that Microsoft Research was more akin to Bell Labs.

> I've always had the impression that MSR (Microsoft Research) was generally doing much more fundamental research than Google.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6919184

"> I've always had the impression that MSR (Microsoft Research) was generally doing much more fundamental research than Google."

They definitely are. Just look at all the MS Research labs and projects. I did once to find them all over the place in terms of both categories of tech and fundamental vs general vs narrow. The Duffy posts on Midori with its design/implementation decisions show how unconventional they can be even when just trying to build a robust, desktop OS whose UI isn't actually radical. Only bad thing is most of best stuff gets turned into patents to stomp on competition. :(

I've met people who worked on Midori and they describe it as the best project they've ever worked on. Used to work in a building with a bunch of old Midori-folks and would ask them about it anytime I heard the word 'Midori'. I don't think it was MSR though.

Personally, I've always been most impressed by the research into formal verification: Z3, Dafny, TLA+, F*, Lean, and many more.

It was MSR:

http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/

Yeah, their verification tools are incredible. They applied VCC to Hyper-V. The driver tools mostly wiped out blue screens. Got a new one called P language used in USB stack. The methods you mentioned like Dafny got applied in ExpressOS by another team:

https://github.com/ExpressOS/expressos

Microsoft did it first in VerveOS although Nucleus was ripped off a mainframe OS from the 1970's. VerveOS was impressive where it was one of first safe to the assembly with much less effort than other projects. They also did CoqASM for verified assembly.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/safe-to...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/coq-wor...

> PARC still exists, but Google advanced technology projects is probably the closest. Neither of these is that close to the old Xerox PARC since they tent to focus on near term commercializable projects.

Yep, researchers at Google just don't seem to publish much at all. Unlike MSR and IBM which have a great culture of publishing and releasing things publicly at high rates (yes, they do also commercialize stuff).