I use to believe that the business model of Microsoft was just selling an overpriced Operating System and Microsoft Office to governments and businesses. I used to believe that the business model of Google was gathering data and selling accurate ads.
I was recently surprised to discover they have research subsidiaries called Microsoft Research and Google Deepmind
Microsoft Research employs more than 1,000 computer scientists, physicists, engineers, and mathematicians, including Turing Award winners, Fields Medal winners, MacArthur Fellows, and Dijkstra Prize winners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_DeepMind
The founder of Deep Mind received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis
Do they do actual research here or is this junk science?
University leadership might. But overall, researchers at universities make really shit money unless they’re getting a lot of grants or they could live lavish lifestyles if they’re consistent grant winning machines and know how to funnel the funds to themselves properly. Sometimes a single professor’s research group gets most of the grants and then money mysteriously gets spent at companies owned by people the professor knows.
This is what I’ve heard anyway. Know someone who was either doing his PhD or had finished it and says he barely made over minimum wage much of the time as a junior researcher. No full time employment contract either, he’d just occasionally get given money when they got a grant lol
Of course in the US universities have money so maybe it’s not as bad there. Here tuition is paid by the government so it’s very limited and science funding is shit too.
Same researchers, if their fields are relevant to anything that can make money, can be much better compensated working in the private sector. But instead of working for the betterment of society, they work to enrich shareholders.