Microsoft Allocates $2.5 Billion For R&D;

Hoping to boost its presence in the on-line market, Microsoft Corp. plans to spend $2.5 billion on research and development in the next two years, a company official said.

That sum is nearly as much as the company spent on research in its first 20 years, Michael Brown, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, told investors at a conference here Thursday.

“We’re not comfortable with anything we do. Everything we ever did could be obsolete real soon. Let’s be the first ones to make it obsolete. We have no sense of complacency at Microsoft,” Brown said.

Internet-related materials will likely draw most of the research money and Brown said the company already is seeing positive results from its recently announced Internet strategy.

Microsoft’s flagship products will continue to be its Windows operating systems, but they’ll be enhanced with Internet tools that will allow people to access the Internet and build their own software to send information out on the Internet, Brown said.