Comments on: IEEE survey: Microsoft is software industry's leading innovator

Microsoft tops the charts as the industry's most innovative company, at least on paper.

[rcrusoe]

It would be interesting to see what percentage of Microsoft's patents were acquired through acquisitions.

For the past decade or so it seems every story about a new Microsoft product mentions a company MS bought.

[jgramling]

Acquiring small companies and new startups is the current trend of every software and web company in the world. Google didn't come up with Google Earth, Picasa, YouTube, SketchUp, Blogger, or Google Docs. They bought/acquired them. Yet Google gets all the credit for being "innovative." Same goes for Yahoo, i.e. Flickr and Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator). The big companies are innovation-less dead spots, who get all the credit simply because they have enough money to strap their name on anything they want.

[Ian Kirkland]

It seems to me that a more valuable assessment might be the patent to product ratio. "Innovation" is nothing if nobody's using it. Also, some 'innovations' turn out to be worthless in the marketplace, solutions to problems no one cares about.

Also, considering the poor performance of the Patent Office, how many of those patents have been granted to other supposed innovators?

[ajaypathak]

it is really gr8 that some one saying some thing good about this gr8 software giant
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