That'd be because MSR was working on stuff for customers, not for shareholders...

MSR was actually working for themselves (researchers who were career paper-publishers aka professors without teaching responsibilities).

Source: worked at MSR

That is exactly what working for the customer is. Fundamental technology, research and science.

Working for the customer is designing a new graph search algorithm that speeds up formula propagation in Excel by 10%. Working for yourself is designing a new graph search algorithm that’s really cool and gets published in top journals and conferences.

The latter makes its way into products occasionally. Which helps the customer. A lot of the stuff I use comes from research not a product team.