And of course, Microsoft has been in business 41 years where as Google has been 18. I'm guessing publication rates between the two are comparable. I wouldn't be surprised if IBM were similar. All three are highly committed to research.
Regardless, comparing the number of papers is meaningless. A better metric is comparing how many significant advances resulted from research funded by the company.
Using the second metric, the winner in all cases - without negotiation - would be AT&T Bell Labs.
Perhaps we could develop an algorithm that uses the number of citations from other papers to rank the importance of each paper, a "PageRank" if you will.
There is something similar for ranking people. H-Index. Given the list of people in each lab it might be possible to quantify the output of a group using that.
Funny how I'm working on exactly that for my major project in Bachelors next semester. I don't have it figured out but it's a problem I'd like to solve.
What's even more amazing is how they followed up with the invention of solar cells, CCD for digital cameras, the MOSFET, etc. So not only did they invent the base (transistor), but they continued to make more inventions using it.
More groundbreaking than other developments singly - probabably; combined? not a chance. Other 20th century developments include flight, rocketry, the United Nations, quantum physics, splitting the atom, the M.A.D. principle, assembly line production, robotics, analog computers (including those used for AA targeting systems in WWII, predating the transistor), among many, many others.
It's easy to romanticize the old Ma Bell especially given the fantastic work done by Bell Labs.
I'd also remind you of the cost of a telephone system with monopoly status that didn't even let you install your own phones in the house for a long time. And which led too skits like Lily Tomlin's "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company."
Bell Labs was able to exist in large part because AT&T was a quasi-government regulated monopoly. You couldn't really have one without the other. (And I'm not sure I'd even say at&t had shady business practices. But they were a de facto monopoly.)
I have no skin in the game in regards to who produces more research. I was just trying to give some data. Also, Microsoft Research has been around since 1991.
