"Just because bell labs was owned by a telco"
They were able to do that because they were a public utility with guaranteed profits. The stock and earnings were stable ("widow and orphan" money was an expression for people who needed these safe investments). Something important to keep in mind. Really not possible to do that in today's competitive disruptive environment.
Yeah, I completely agree, it's just obviously not possible for companies to do research anymore. Anyone who doesn't see this - I just don't understand how you can fail to.
Re:Google Fiber Plans & Pricing
by niels_olson on Thursday July 26, 2012 @11:57PM
(#4299952)
> obviously not possible for companies to do research anymore
Er, does Google nor do research? apple? IBM? Samsung? My dad worked for a railroad. They did R&D...
I was being sarcastic. I was parroting what I was seeing in the comments of a different story at the time.
I would not be surprised if the 3 net upvotes I got were due to people not appreciating the sarcasm and just being stupid.
IBM isn't a public utility with guaranteed profits, but they do a fair amount of both fundamental and applied research.
IBM has one of the most extensive patent portfolios known to man.
Whatever basic research they do, it's definitely in pursuit of digits for the bottom line.
Re:Google Fiber Plans & Pricing
by tesseractive on Saturday July 28, 2012 @07:47PM
(#4306968)
By the way, MSR was created as an active attempt to recreate an analogue to Bell Labs. It certainly doesn't have anything as foundational to show for it as transistors or lasers, but it's certainly possible for today's big tech companies to do the same kind of work.
Just because bell labs was owned by a telco, doesn't mean they were a telco. A research organization existing under the ownership of a telco company doesn't make telcos provide good service, or have fair prices, or have good customer service.