What do you mean? There’s plenty of high impact research on databases happening in academia. (Including, for example, Andy’s group at CMU)

Also keep in mind that the part you quoted is partially marketing copy.

I take this announcement to mean he is leaving. So he's a perfect example

	▲	kenferry 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There are areas of academia where I definitely worry about this kind of thing, but not really database research (and in general CS is a lot less worrisome than most fields). It's a good thing when industry is a competitively attractive environment for research, which is how I read this.