Berkeley's getting another corporate funded, research lab. Marc Davis, of Garage Cinema fame, is starting up Yahoo! Research Berkeley, according to Bradley Horowitz. And he should know as Director of Technology Development at Y!. Here's betting you start to see some kickass, mobile and social media projects emerging from Yahoo! in the near future.
For those not into the academic research computing scene, there's a relatively recent trend where big computing companies create little knockoffs of Xerox PARC near computing research rich urban areas. Witness the Intel research Lablets, MSR in various places, and Google in Kirkland, WA. Heck, even locally Toyota has dropped a bunch of money on U of C to feed starving theorists. (I kid!)
As far as I can tell, none of them have had quite the synergistic energy and results the original PARC did, but dang if it ain't nice for the scholarly types who get hooked up with them. Depending on the arrangement, you get less teaching, more money, and access to a company's user base and infrastructure. Of course you're subject to the economic winds, you've got a bit more serious legal department, and there are fewer graduate serf...er...students.