Building 9 did not look happy. It was another drizzly October day on the rain-drenched Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington-and the mood outside only augmented the tempest within. Offices were being cleaned out, desks and file cabinets either missing or abandoned, boxes of equipment stacked in the halls. Many inhabitants of the sleek two-story structure had opted to work at home in the face of a triple horror: no computers, no e-mail, no Internet.

Moving day for Microsoft Research. The lab was deserting its headquarters in the center of the Soft's big quad for Building 31, a roomier three-story facility on the northeast end of the action. Upheavals are common at the titan of software-but the ride Research has taken counts as wild even by Microsoft standards.