MS, Google to Fund UC Berkeley Lab

Google, Microsoft and Sun are joining forces to assist the University of California, Berkeley in opening its Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems lab. The lab would help technology startups introduce their ideas to a wider audience. The companies will contribute equally to the $1.5 million that the project is expected to give yearly to entrepreneurs.

Altogether, the project is expected to cost $7.5 million dollars. Six faculty members and ten graduate students would staff the lab initially; it would produce Web-based software services that anyone could use. Microsoft cautioned that the collaboration should not be seen as a truce, pointing out they are working with the college and not each other.