Any of the big companies -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon come to mind -- do tons of things that even 10 years ago would have been considered cutting-edge computer science research. Whether it's OS changes, algorithm development, database technologies, UI testing, or data science, those companies (among others) are working with far larger data sets than most university researchers can ever touch. Plus, they don't have to deal with the sorts of ethics committees that universities have in place.
On this last point, I should mention that my dissertation research involved the creation of a collaborative Web application for people developing agent-based models. The IRB (ethics board) insisted that anyone who would want to use my Web site would need to fax a permission form to the university office. You can imagine how this would have killed any use of my site, and thus of my dissertation work. It took several months of pleading with them to get them agree that usage of the site wouldn't require a faxed form. Doing that same sort of work at Facebook et. al. would have been a non-issue.
And yes, there are ethical and privacy issues associated with Facebook, Google, etc. I'm not ignoring them, merely pointing to the abundance of data and opportunities they have at their disposal.
There are still advantages to a university laboratory, including the cushion that you have from real-world profitability. There's something nice about being able to spend months or years looking at a problem, without having shareholders looking over your shoulder. But universities have their own politics and problems, and they're far from the pristine labs we'd like to imagine.
"Any of the big companies -- Google, Facebook, and Amazon come to mind -- do tons of things that even 10 years ago would have been considered cutting-edge computer science research."
Absolutely true, but is it possible to work in those places without a PhD?
One path I can imagine would be to devote 2-3 years to independent study, attend appropriate conferences and get to know the researchers on a professional and personal level. Build some respect on your own dime before trying to move to professional work.
No idea if that would work, though - whether there are avenues for an amateur-but-devoted scientist to contribute to research, or whether that research would break down any barriers.
I know someone who was doing a PhD on neural networks, and interned at Google during it (a research group involving NNs). He was told by that research team that they wouldn't hire him without his completed phd. He cut his phd short to a masters and got a job at Google anyway, but unfortunately I can't remember whether it was on that research team, or a generic software-engineer position (either way, the internship was the foot in the door).
You can certainly do good independent work, and write and publish papers if you want. If you can prove your conpetence, why shouldn't you be hired? At least, not every employer is going to have a major bias against those without PhDs.
But most of the people in the 'Research' departments of companies will have PhDs. For example, see the list of full-time positions at MSR [0]: both 'Researcher' positions require a PhD (Researcher - "Successful candidates will have a Ph.D", Post-Doc Researcher - "Applicants must have completed the requirements for a PhD, including submission of their thesis, prior to joining Microsoft Research"), and it sounds like it is helpful for some of the 'Technical' postions (Research Software Development Engineers - "RSDEs are strong software developers with a Bachelor’s Degree, and often a Masters or Ph.D. in computer science"). There are 'Non-PhD Researcher Opportunities', but only in India and China.
Hello, I'm a PhD doing agent-based models. Is your site (of your dissertation) still working? Can you share the resources? (I checked your personal site but couldn't find it).
It's far from perfect, and I really need to do some maintenance on it one of these days. But as things stand, I have the largest public collection of agent-based models. One of my committee members told me that another research group had done something similar, but with a multi-million dollar NSF grant. That certainly made my day!
What would be some of these ways in your opinion?