AT&T Labs versus Google Labs. Many of the faculty here boast of having “worked for a phone company” at some point of time in their life. I guess the next generation will boast of having worked for an “html shop”. I’d like to point out that as CS research matures, there are many more people who would like to put money into it today, as opposed to a single phone company in days of yore. Many other dotcoms(Y!Research, MSNSearchLabs, Amazon), medicine companies(Pfizer), have a huge, increasing need for CS, and hence are making huge investments towards furthering research as well. While it breaks the “Cathedral” paradigm into a more “Bazaar”-like scene, this means more jobs, more money, and most importantly, much, much more work done in the area than in the past.