In the interests of helping
entrepreneurs bring their ideas to a larger audience, Microsoft corp. and
Google Inc. have set aside their differences and will jointly fund a new lab
dubbed Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems, or RAD. Also
contributing to the team are Sun Microsystems Inc. and faculty from the University of California,
Berkeley which
is where the lab will be housed. Scheduled to open on Thursday, RAD is slated
to dispense $1.5 million annually over the next five years.
In the not
too distant past Microsoft and Google have seen fierce competition, especially
in the search arena, and their dirty laundry has at least been partially aired
in a recent Washington state legal battle over Google's hiring of some former
Microsoft personnel. Commenting on the venture Microsoft senior researcher
James Larus said that the joint venture should not be seen as a truce. "We
are not going into this with the idea that we are going to be collaborating
with Google or that they will be collaborating with us," said Larus.
News source: The Herald News / The Associated Press
