Microsoft Proves 'Six Degrees' -- But Why?

Kevin Maney is just sayin': Microsoft Research gets a lot of flak for spending a couple hundred million dollars a year and not exactly coming up with breakthrough products for the company. This was on public display as Microsoft chased Yahoo earlier this year to get Yahoo's search traffic...because Microsoft never came up with a search engine of its own that made an impact. It doesn't help that you can point back to projects like Teddy the creepy child-monitoring bear.

So, the latest headline-maker from Microsoft Research? It sorted through a database of billions of text messages to prove the reality of "six degrees of separation" -- well, actually it turns out to be more like seven. But why do this? Microsoft says it might be useful in reaching people for marketing and politics. But that's not exactly going to make the next Windows any better than Vista, no?

Still, Microsoft is quite proud of Microsoft Research, and Bill Gates just helped the labs' Beijing branch celebrate its tenth anniversary. And whether or not the research is helping Microsoft's bottom line, fewer corporations are investing in real research these days, so we're still thankful Microsoft is willing to keep hundreds of scientists gainfully employed.

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