Relatedly, Steve Ballmer a few weeks ago at Microsoft's earnings:
"We increasingly are only working on things that are actually very important. The day and age of idle, smaller things [at Microsoft] is a little bit behind us. We're putting more energy behind fewer things than we have historically."[1]
This is probably a bigger news and also sadder as Microsoft labs does great research and really hardcore stuff that never sees daylight. Google labs on the other hand though is more consumer oriented.
"We increasingly are only working on things that are actually very important. The day and age of idle, smaller things [at Microsoft] is a little bit behind us. We're putting more energy behind fewer things than we have historically."[1]
[1]:http://www.winsupersite.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/b...