Microsoft's Asia Research Center in Beijing
Now Largest Outside US
After just marking its fifth anniversary in November,
Microsoft's research center in Beijing is now playing
a lead or major role in the development of Microsoft's
next generation products and services. Projects they are
currently working on are the next-generation Xbox, which
will replace the current Xbox; and Microsoft's search
engine, which will compete head-to-head with services
from Google and Yahoo!
According to Shen Xiangyang, assistant chairman of the
center, the Beijing research center was founded in 1998,
and in 2001, it changed its name to Microsoft Research
Asia center. Microsoft now has four research centers outside
the US, and the Asia center in Beijing is now the largest,
employing more than 180 persons, and is currently aggressively
hiring more persons. He said that Microsoft has an annual
research budget of US$6.5 billion, of which $250 million
is used by the overseas research centers.
Shen said that some of the projects the Asia research
center is working on are picture management, multimedia,
voice recognition and natural language processing. The
next generation operating system from Microsoft, Longhorn,
would also incorporate powerful search capabilities, some
of which would be developed at the Asia research center.
He said that Microsoft hoped to become the search leader
in non-English search, replacing Google. After Microsoft
headquarters decided it would be impossible to acquire
Google, they asked internal developers to start development
on a replacement. Currently, the Asia research center
has 12 persons working on search with developers at Redmond,
he said.
Shen added that it would not be difficult for Microsoft
to duplicate the capabilities of Google search, but conceded
that Google had a strong lead with its brand. But Microsoft
still had an opportunity to overtake Google in the next
few years.
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