Most relevant to the hypotheticals here, one question is whether you can get a position with research freedom in the private sector without going into academia at all. If you choose industry rather than academia, is it possible? Or do you need to first get that "professor" line on your resume to be able to land those kinds of industry positions?

I work for IBM Research. While I do not have complete freedom, I feel that my research and development mandate is quite broad within my project. I came straight from grad school. Most people that are hired into IBM Research were not professors, but are coming from grad school or post-docs.

Anyone with a Masters degree (working as a researcher)?

Kinda. There are so e people who have Masters degrees who work in Research, but they don't typically have what I think of as a "research mandate". They have more development responsibilities. But, there are some people with PhDs who are the same.

Most people, though, have PhDs.

Didn't they just shutdown Hawthorne, move everyone in software to Yorktown, and lose a lot of people to Google New York in the process? What's left?

We moved, yes, but I'm not aware of anyone who left because of the move. I'm actually happier up in Yorktown - it's a better building than Hawthorne.

I strongly believe the "professor" title is not a point of strength on one's resume vs solid industry experience. In general, if one is taking the time and effort required to become a tenured professor, he/she should stick with it. Sure, there are anecdotal cases (Harvard profs going to Goog...), but those are anecdotes and not the mean.