Wow, MSR got some really good people out of this. Yahoo! have had a great research lab, but with the recent layoffs and now this it looks like it's on the way out. MS has shown they commercialise products out of MSR (e.g. the Kinect) so this could have a big impact in a few years.

Underlying technology of Kinect came from a different research lab.

John Langford's comments on the subject: http://hunch.net/?p=2341

Yahoo has more pressing issues than research. A shift of focus away from research was to be expected after the last reorg.

Yes, but it's a sign of a company in decline. Research is what keeps you at the forefront of your industry- at this point no-one is expecting Yahoo to do that, but it's still sad.

Not always. It's extremely hard to integrate an internal R&D department into a product pipeline. Id your research organization is detached from the rest of the company, its work will not be as readily integrated into the products other divisions make.

This is awesome news. Microsoft Research already has a great set of theorists in their New England lab, but clearly they were missing resident sociologists/economists. They can't have hoped for a richer haul than what they just landed here, that too in one shot.

Also this just proves further (in case anyone doubted) that Microsoft is in the game for the long haul.

David Pennock Morgan Stanley Process Driven Trading, New York, NY, May 2008

Many quants have moved to silicon alley/valley from wallstreet due to the spectacular crash of 2007. Curiously, there have been much chatter about a crash in the tech sector lately - strange attractors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model Serious pickup for MS.

While there are exceptions, you generally need the research merit badge - a PhD. If it's something you seriously want to do, consider entering grad school.

They came from NY.

Awesome. Hope they open the kimono and invite people in for meetups from time to time :)