"> I've always had the impression that MSR (Microsoft Research) was generally doing much more fundamental research than Google."

They definitely are. Just look at all the MS Research labs and projects. I did once to find them all over the place in terms of both categories of tech and fundamental vs general vs narrow. The Duffy posts on Midori with its design/implementation decisions show how unconventional they can be even when just trying to build a robust, desktop OS whose UI isn't actually radical. Only bad thing is most of best stuff gets turned into patents to stomp on competition. :(