There are two different angles in this story: Google is "elitist" and Amazon empowers its users much more than Google.
The elitist part is, I think, irrelevant, difficult to prove and ambiguous. "Google has invented something very cool, but they won’t show it to you unless they think you are among the world’s elite engineers." Would it be better if Google was only willing to show the best of its technology only to beer buddies of the janitor? Then it wouldn't be "elitist" (maybe) but it still would be pointless.
The problem here is that Google's blog post does not discuss how "petasorts" benefit Google's users; an engineering feat, certainly, but why should we care? This sounds a little like Microsoft R&D of which very little ever came out (at least in proportion to the hundreds of billions poured into it).
In contrast, what Amazon does is always, always geared toward its users / customers. The thing is, Amazon HAS customers, and serves them well (they answer to email, even pick up the phone).
I don't think Google thinks about their users as customers.
> I don't think Google thinks about their users as customers.
Why should they?
A customer is someone who gives you money. Amazon is in the business of doing things for users in exchange for money; Amazon's customers are its users. Google, in contrast, is in the business of doing things for users to get them to look at ads. Google's customers are advertisers.
I'm a heavy user of Google's services. But I've never given them a cent. I'm not a Google customer; I don't see why I should be treated like one.
"To answer, we need to be careful in recognizing that the customer is the advertiser, not the user. Like in all advertising business models, the user is the product."
You are only as valuable as your eyeballs.
But Google, like any other large organization, isn't intrinsically elitist or evil or munificent or dysfunctional. These example adjectives are emergent properties of a company culture. GM is an interesting example of a company working hard to change its culture and by doing so change some of the adjectives people might use when describing them.
Yes, for most of Google's products, the customer is the advertiser and the user is the product.
Most, but not all, though.
For example, AdWords is also (mostly?) targeted at small businesses, who are therefore customers but who are, for all practical purposes, considered users, and treated as such.
ClearType didn't come out of MSR, Kinect was an acquisition, SongSmith has gone nowhere since it's mild viral success a couple years back, and Photosynth was based on an acquired project and company.
F# might be the only item you listed that originated in the MSR division and has moderate success.
This video http://techtalks.tv/talks/54443/ on machine learning by Bishop talks about the research they applied to kinect. There was much work done beyond the acquisition.
Anyways watch the video, its real good and worth watching for its own sake.
Of the things you mention, the only successful one is the Kinect, and it doesn't come from MSR: it was an Israeli company that Microsoft bought after they were turned down by Apple.
Speaking of which, do you remember that about the same time that the Ipad came out (or just before then), Microsoft was demonstrating a touch surface for coffee tables?
Microsoft Research was never a product development arm, it was a research arm. In that area they've succeeded magnificently -- a huge amount of seminal OS papers (back when I was doing systems research) came out of MSR. In contrast, the Google papers always were (and I think mostly still are) complete crap. I say this as an exiting Google intern who's trying to work for them full-time.
The elitist part is, I think, irrelevant, difficult to prove and ambiguous. "Google has invented something very cool, but they won’t show it to you unless they think you are among the world’s elite engineers." Would it be better if Google was only willing to show the best of its technology only to beer buddies of the janitor? Then it wouldn't be "elitist" (maybe) but it still would be pointless.
The problem here is that Google's blog post does not discuss how "petasorts" benefit Google's users; an engineering feat, certainly, but why should we care? This sounds a little like Microsoft R&D of which very little ever came out (at least in proportion to the hundreds of billions poured into it).
In contrast, what Amazon does is always, always geared toward its users / customers. The thing is, Amazon HAS customers, and serves them well (they answer to email, even pick up the phone).
I don't think Google thinks about their users as customers.