The minds behind Microsoft Research

Computerworld - There's a joke at Microsoft Research that designing the next version of Microsoft Office is like ordering pizza for 100 million people. No matter how you do it, a few million of them are going to complain.

But Microsoft Research (MSR) General Manager Kevin Schofield shrugs off the difficulty of designing technology for mass markets. "It's our job to understand user differences," he says.

Microsoft Research (MSR) General Manager Kevin Schofield

Indeed, the scope of activities within MSR is stunning. A lot of the research is what you might expect, with computer scientists dreaming up a new widget for mobile communication, a new search algorithm aimed at topping Google or some new way to make Windows more secure. But MSR also engages in long-term fundamental research that might never produce revenue.

For example, it is working with several medical labs on the application of pattern-matching algorithms -- which it developed to recognize spam -- to the design of AIDS vaccines. "The reason that HIV is so resistant to our immune system is because it gets in a host and throws off many new mutations, so your body can't get a good, robust immunity to it," Schofield says. That's the sort of strategy used by spammers. A trial vaccine based on Microsoft's algorithms has just begun in vitro testing.

Tortoise or Hare?

Critics have said that Microsoft has been slow to respond to competition, such as open-source alternatives to its products and to upstart companies like Google. But Schofield says the company's huge research resources give it extraordinary agility. He says Microsoft, as a matter of policy, won't bid on government research projects -- such as those funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- because they would tend to lock the company into a slow pace of research in certain areas. (He concedes that Microsoft doesn't need the money.)

As an example of Microsoft's agility, Schofield points to the company's development of its Web search engine, MSN Search. Two years ago, Microsoft outsourced search to Inktomi Corp., but it concluded that to survive against the likes of Google and Yahoo, it had to build its own search engine.