Slashdot Mirror
Bing Loses More Money As Microsoft Chases Google
angry tapir writes "Microsoft posted strong results for the third quarter of its 2010 fiscal year, largely thanks to sales of Windows 7. But the company continues to suffer heavy losses in its Online Services Division [warning: obnoxious interstitial] as it tries to match Google in the online search and advertising market. ... The division's quarterly loss grew by 73 percent to $713 million, compared to a loss of $411 million during the same period last year."
... but we make it up in volume!
Competing on the world stage isn't cheap. I do find it surprising that MS lost $713 on its "Online Services Division", but keep in mind not all of that is search/anti-Google. They are rolling out their "Office LIve" stuff as well as pushing their version of the "cloud".
the Bing results page feel like one of those typosquatter's "featured" results.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Which is....ummmm.......
Can I get back to you?
"We are Samurai, the Keyboard...Cowboys"
Why would you even bother to try and compete with a real world power like Google? Go ahead... try to name a better search engine. Bing is a sick joke! BURN, Bing, BURN!!! ah hah, ah hah hah hah, mwa hah, mwa hah hah hah hah hah hah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
to make money.
Just ask the Bureau of Printing and Engraving.
Bing is a decision engine, so they should be able to decide when to pull the plug...
But that's offset by the pint of bull semen CmdrTaco drinks every day with his vitamins.
I think it's important to consider the unbelievable forces involved -- nearly limitless funds on both sides. How many companies would like to take in the amount Microsoft casually loses? How much did they lose on Xbox in the beginning? When the rich guys go at it and it feels good that the rest of us pick a winner, what about the other companies that should have been contenders but couldn't buy admission? What Microsoft decides it wants, it tends to get. One of the government attorneys involved in the antitrust suit commented that they had legal resources that rivaled the Department of Justice.
The Google/Facebook conflict is another one to watch. I don't think Google has abandoned Buzz by any means, and Facebook is really pissing off a lot of people these days.
In all cases, don't linger on the losses they're having. They can afford it.
The main problem with Bing is that you can't really use the world as a verb like you can with Google. Think about it - you can't say you're going to "bing" something, it just sounds gross.
"We are Samurai, the Keyboard...Cowboys"
Oft-times I'll know exactly what I'm looking for, or even the exact site I want to go to, and going via google is often faster than remembering/typing a URL. I know my search result will be top, as I know what to search for. This is far more hit and miss with Bing.
This does change over time, however. It used to be the case that if I wanted a review on a new pair of speakers or a motherboard or whatnot, I could google the product with the word review in the search, such as "b&w 683 review". Whilst for that particular search you'll find some good reviews do pop up first, for a lot of products its an ordeal trying to find decent reviews. Often it'll be a sales page where you can drop your own review, and more often that not they're blank. Its becoming more and more difficult to search for professional reviews, so for many products I go direct to specialist review sites, such as tomshardware for computer stuff.
I seem to have run a little off topic, but my point is that all of this is far more difficult to accomplish with Bing than it is with google, so I'm not surprised they're losing money - they've entered a marketplace with an inferior product (at least for the casual home user), and that's rarely a profitable move.
I just Googled 'Bing'. And search Bing for 'Google'. The one time in history Bing had better results. Nobody on the intertubes cares about Bing, there's very little to find.
F8 in Opera, F6 in (most) others. Also, Ctrl + Enter.
That old management consulting chestnut quantifies (in a rough manner similar to Moore's law) how the industry leader maintains a substantial cost advantage over the competition, because they've "been there, done that" while the laggards are still encountering situations for the first time.
BTW have you ever heard someone say something like "bing experience curve"? That doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so in addition to be being behind on the e-curve, someone in Redmond fscked up in the applied linguistics department.
No, seriously.
MS should change the name to Bingo.
It would properly represent the gamble of relevant search results provided by bing.
If you get pissed off you could use it as a cuss-word really loudly and nobody would get offended (and they would know your pain).
Old grannies playing BINGO in a Bingo hall, is about as exiting as bing.
I mean it fits on so many levels.
There is no shortcut key to go to the URL bar
In IE, Alt-D takes you to the address bar (what you call the URL bar).
click on the search box, but again, there is no shortcut
In IE, Ctrl-E takes you to the search box.
If Microsoft wants to get ahead, stop trying to imitate and start innovating. The only time imitation works is when the current product becomes crappy. Take for instance the Xbox 360, it didn't get ahead because it was great, but rather got ahead because the competition was crappy. The Wii had (has) a shortage of good games and the PS3 was (and still almost is) far too expensive.
Google isn't getting any worse and Bing just isn't innovating in any meaningful way. Trying to promote Bing is like promoting alternate keyboard layouts, even if it -is- better, any benefits will be lost in the fact that people have to re-learn something. Google isn't just a search engine, its a bookmarking engine. Its a lot easier to remember "nexus one review" than http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/04/nexus-one-review/
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... this article provides a nice comparison of Apple's recent quarter to Microsoft's recent quarter.
... when I want to use the cash-back feature. But I've usually used Google to narrow down my purchase first.
Microsoft does have a bit of history of sinking large amounts of money on totally losing projects, and there have been suggestions that it may be partially intentional.
The poster child for this is Internet Explorer, which was developed and handed out free, for a 100% monetary loss. Various people have suggested that the intent was never to charge for it. The motive wasn't profit; it was control. The idea is that they wanted to control the "browser market", which included killing any startup that wanted to make money on a browser. They succeeded at that, and even the most critical reviewers agree that MS still controls at least 2/3 of the browser "market". From a power viewpoint, IE has been a real success, even if it has been a money sinkhole. It gives MS control of a large part of how the Web works in reality. It has especially been an effective tool at scrambling all attempts to develop rational standards and interoperability.
The only people who consider this a "loss" are those who believe that money is the only corporate motivator. Those who understand a desire for power and control find it easy to understand why corporations like Microsoft would sink so much of their profits into such losing projects.
It's entirely possible that MS's ongoing attempts to get into the search "market" is something along the same line. It may not matter to them how much money they lose, as long as they end up in control, with the insignificant startups all bankrupt and standards irrelevant because Bing is the de facto standard and doesn't interoperate with anything they don't control.
In particular, their main motivator may be all the information on our searches that google is collecting. Imagine what Microsoft could do to the world if they had control of all that information.
(Of course, some of us are starting to worry about the effect of nice guys like google having all that information. And maybe it'd be prudent to not worry about it quite so publicly. After all, google does know what you've been googling ... ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
maybe they should have started by not naming there search engine something stupid like Bing! Just bing it.. doesn't sound as good.
Firefox has a good solution too, given that accessing the URL bar is a quick keystroke and then a tab over to enter the search box.
If you think that is convenient, then CTRL+K will change your life.
Compete with Sony and Samsung, make a TV. I'll buy it.
For some reason, corporations seem to feel the need to compete in areas where they're clearly outmatched no matter what. So we'll see Google, Microsoft, Apple and whoever else steps up to the plate slug it out for a chance to lose millions chasing a train that left the station years ago.
Bing is a prime example of this kind of dysfunctional behavior. Microsoft has even gone to the extreme of paying people to use Bing and they're still not going to make it. In the world of web search, Google has years of experience doing it and they're getting better every day. Microsoft can't catch up no matter how much money they throw at it - in the final analysis, the general public reaches for Google when they want to search. I suppose Bing can slug it out with Alta Vista and Yahoo! for the "also ran" prize. If Microsoft would put all this money and effort into improving the things they're strong in - but no, we'll suffer along with bug-ridden Windows and Office while Microsoft chases the Google butterfly.
Google is doing it too - diverting resources from their core competency to compete in operating systems. Android looks like it has a chance because the competition phoned in their submission (Windows CE, WTF?), but the Chrome OS will be fighting an uphill battle all the way. It's good, but not as good as Sugar and that's a non-starter. They can park the wreck of Chrome OS next to the burned out husks of BeOS, Next, AmigaOS, and others in the scrapheap of history. That doesn't mean they won't "sell" a bunch of copies - but taking Microsoft on in the OS space is every bit as insane as Microsoft taking Google on in the search space and in the end it'll all count for nothing.
Right now, Apple has arguably the best cell phone OS in existence. It's much more polished than Android and - Windows CE doesn't count. Windows Mobile 7 is vaporware and while the demos look great the reality when they finally ship copies is almost certain to follow their past performances and be a giant disappointment. Apple doesn't have a free ride in this mess either - they're caught up in that "We sold a lot of units so we must be something special" nonsense. They're going to have to stop thinking they're superior and get busy; iPhone was very nice, but the competition is working on their game and despite their constant attempts to fail one of them is going to get it right one of these days.
The next few years should be very interesting. From here, it looks like Google will continue to own web search (and advertising) and Microsoft will continue to own operating systems and "office" applications. Apple, despite their desperately dysfunctional leadership will be worth more than either one (if not both) of them - only because they avoided throwing money away trying to bury Google or Microsoft. But they're not immune from the need to destroy themselves - watch the news and see what kind of lunacy they take part in as their superiority complex becomes blatantly obvious.
How many of us have SINCERELY used "MS bing" for searching purposes? Not me.
Other tan forced usage through some silly toolbar/MS program, I would even say it's virtually unknown in Spain (for example)...
--
Get 250 extra MB Dropbox space using this invitation http://bit.ly/agkF3r
MS may have bigger problems than just the online services division. For example, statcounter is currently showing four straight weeks of flat usage share for windows 7 in north america. If this is really a trend or if statcounter is flubbing their surveys remains to be seen. But if it's true, it means that win7 doesn't even seem to be able to cannibalize old OSes very well. I would say it's depressing for MS, but they're raking in bajillions of dollars every quarter still, which is more than me.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
>> Unless Bing starts behaving like Apple and delivering what I don't even know I want yet, I don't see it heading much anywhere.
WTF? No wonder apple users are called "sheeple".
Old grannies playing BINGO in a Bingo hall
Rule 34.
No exceptions.
One Bing to rule them all.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Just imagine how different the world would be if Microsoft heeded the advice of its own research arm - Microsoft research. Back in 1999-2000, MSR researchers were chomping at the bit to create a search engine (which at the time would have been FAR more advanced than anything else on the market, including Google). All they needed was budget and a "go ahead", the motivation was made abundantly clear to the executives. Ballmer said "no".
Fast forward five years, and in about 2004-2005 Ballmer realizes that he's getting his ass brutally kicked. But by then not only was Microsoft far behind Google, it was far behind Yahoo as well. And catching up only works as well as PHBs hope if your competition is standing still, which in this case it is not.
How totally delusional can you possibly be?
Last gen Microsoft wasted billions only to end up:
Last place in Japan
Last place in Europe
And the console only viable in the US and a few other minor markets
This gen Microsoft has wasted billions only to end up:
Last place in Japan
Last place in Europe
And once again only viable in the US and a few other minor markets
The only thing Microsoft has going for it this gen is a 50 percent failure rate to pad out their worldwide sales total from suckers buying 3,4,5 or more Xbox 360 replacement units.
And if you think that's convenient, you really need to check out the Vimperator firefox plugin.
I wonder if Bing will find its place in companies desktop SOE through the transition between Windows XP and Windows 7. Most companies will lock down the desktops pretty tight, so depending on how your IT department feels you may not get a choice of what search engine you use.
There may even be incentives to do this... I hope not.
YAY! *sticks out tongue at MS* ...am i in the club yet?
Microsoft can't build a competitive search engine and Google can't field a competitive Office Suite -- and neither of them have taken the cell phone world by storm yet. All is still good and balanced with the universe.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You can't possibly be this stupid.
Last gen Microsoft lost some 4 billion dollars on the Xbox fiasco. This gen Microsoft has lost about the same amount. Although they are doing a somewhat better job this gen hiding the losses in Entertainment and Devices' other profitable products.
Last gen the Xbox got destroyed by Sony and Nintendo in Japan and Europe. This gen the Xbox 360 is getting destroyed by Sony and Nintendo in Japan and Europe. Last gen the Xbox survived off US and UK sales. This gen the Xbox 360 is surviving off US and UK sales once again.
Even more mind boggling is the 66 percent failure rate leading to millions and millions of duplicate Xbox 360s being sold still hasn't help Microsoft do any better this gen than last gen's fiasco.
But you do have to hand it to the idiots running Microsoft's online services. They are taking the crown from the 8 billion dollar Xbox train wreck for Microsoft's biggest financial turd.
ctrl+e can easily be done with one hand on the mouse and accomplishes the same task.
On the upside, for Microsoft employees, that means less money to spend on chairs. *ducks*
This space up for sale.
Awesome news, IMO. Maybe they're stop chasing shit that have no real expertise in anyway. Had they paid more attention to their core business Vista would have never happened.
Mmm, tried it, didn't like it.
Let me say I can happily use vi all day. I also think that nethack shortcuts are intuitive (well, maybe not - but I like them).
The thing is a document viewer has different input requirements to a document editor.
Vimperator is cute, but I can't shake the feeling it is a joke taken too far. Something like the unixkcd thing, only the neckbeards coding it forgot to include a punchline.
Besides, firefox implements "/" for page search so I'm happy.
If you read the entire Business Week article, it turns out that advertising revenue is up 19% at Bing. What's killing them is the Yahoo deal, which is apparently a money drain during the cutover. Microsoft's "online services" also include other MSN-related things, including their declining dial-up business.
It's too early to tell how this will unwind. Microsoft is patient. Bear in mind that the original XBox lost money through its lifespan. Only now is the gaming operation moving into positive territory.
Not here, AC, I just tried. Maybe in Windowsland (TM).
But come now, did you really need to hide your identity for that?
You'll take a bribe to pretend to use their search engine to find products. This helps them persuade advertisers that people use Bing to find products - and so they should advertise on Bing and pay top rate. Now, of course they're paying out more than they're taking in, or the books would be written in black ink.
Now what happens when they stop bribing people to pretend to use their search to find products - as eventually they must? Three guesses, no peeking at the answers.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Microsoft president Steve Ballmer announced a name change. OSD will be known as OCD. ("I'll fucking kill Google!" (chairs flying))
and an Alt+Enter will open the result in a new tab
Doesn't hold a candle to alt+f4
Bing losing money is surprising, given it's the best Internet porn search engine.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
I really hope Bing succeeds. I haven't used it much so far, mostly out of Inertia. But I don't like the idea of placing all my bets with Google. It's very important that an alternate good quality search engine is available. MS is best placed to achieve that for they have the man-power & the money. I hope they succeed.
Perhaps its the name? Bing! I suppose it couldn't be the sound of a chair landing near the recently minted Googler, that would be Bang! And I also suppose it couldn't be the sound of a ball bouncing, or is that the sound of a jet bouncing? Anyway, that would be Boeing. So, to recap, it could be Bing, but definitely can't be Bang or Boeing. Oh, and for those crazy slashdotters out there, it can't be bong either. Water pipe maybe, but not bong!
Tiny orgasm
They took down that expensive Microsoft Flight Simulator!
(Nah, I'm just cranky about it; that's the ONE THING about Microsoft that always worked for me, the way it needed to, and I missed after switching to Linux in 1999.)
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
One day Microsoft are going to realize that stupidly plus money is no match for smart. They can't beat Google and they know it, all they can hope for is to slow Google down a little at huge expense to themselves.
Carry on MS - it's fun to watch you burn your shareholders money.
Microsoft is improving its stratospherically successful "decision engine," Bob Hope, with a feature that allows you to "visual search" on "web" "sites."
"This is what happens at the cutting edge of research, y'know," said marketing marketer Yusuf Mehdi at the Tech Crunch 50 conference yesterday. "You can use Microsoft Search to 'search' for any page on the Information Superhighway! And it's really quite amazing what's out there. Man. That's actually our slogan — 'Microsoft Search: It's Really Quite Amazing What's Out There. Man.'"
The "search" feature is part of technology acquired in the deal with Yahoo! "We bought this fantastic thing they were working on. It's a directory of links to web pages. People put stuff into classifications. You can 'crowd-source' it, you know! You visualise what you're looking for, type it in words and this stuff shows up. Amazing! I don't know how anyone never thought of it before. We have about fifty precomputed 'searches' in there at the moment, with more to come. Windows 7! The 'wow' starts now! You know, sometimes I wonder how people even managed to use computers before Windows 7."
Search requires installing Microsoft Silverlight, .NET 3.5, the latest service packs and Windows Genuine Advantage. Office 2007 is also recommended. It runs best in Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows 7 computer. "We don't see how Goog— that other company can possibly compete. Theirs doesn't use anything extra. How the hell are you supposed to get people hooked like that? They just don't have a business model."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
"If Microsoft wants to get ahead, stop trying to imitate and start innovating"
This is the stupidest fucking thing I have ever read on slashdot*.
Microsoft is a m o n o p o l y -- they dominate technological choke points as best they can. If anything they should lobby the US government to only allow their "safe" software to be sold and used and thus extend the life of their monopoly.
* This is a joke about Trey, don't take it personal
Your signature elaborates your decision...
Google has shown in the past that they care allot about protecting they customer information
While Microsoft has shown in the past that all they care about is making things theirs
where a failed attempt to make the internet Microsoft compliant rather then open to all things OS by sticking to their own standards instead of W3C.
No thanks, I'd choose Google any time over MS
where a failed attempt...
should have been <!-- IE lt 8 --> where a failed attemp... /. would allow html commenting :O
didnt realize
Google has declared over $30 billion in tangible assets for 2009.
They even paid more than your $1.5 billion estimate in income taxes in 2009.
Frankly, I even think that Google has enough money to develop a competing OS and eventually displace Microsoft from their position of control in the OS market, but I don't think that they're at all interested.
From others. Not from themselves. Which makes sense, because that data is their most valuable asset, so they are very interested to not give it away.
While a company collecting data and not giving it away is still better than one collecting it and giving it away, the company shouldn't collect it to begin with.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
They have thanked me for the information by giving me great tools at no real cost My cellphone provider knows more about me as they do and all they do is charge me...
Thank you for that! My life is changed. (BTW, it's CMD-K on a Mac, but you knew that.)
Damn. I was hoping that CTRL+K would kill the browser session. Then I'd go around telling people to press CTRL+K
Well, if you think the tools are worth the information you give them, well, great. I don't think they are, and therefore I don't use the tools (apart from search and maps).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Binged "Opera" and "Chrome" and "Firefox". Good results too. 3 out of 3 = 100% succes rate, and highly likely to remain like that.
I think there is also a very simple reason for Bing to "fail". Wether it is as good as google does not matter. It isn't any better. So why change? I know google and how to tune it. No, it isn't perfect. Why do I far to often get ancient results on subjects google should know recent entries might be more relevant (if I google "ubunutu ati driver" what do I want, results from 2001 or 2010?) and why can I only pick "last week" or "last year". Don't months exist in google land?
But Bing doesn't do it any better, so why bother?
Hey MS! INNOVATE! Do something NEW, IMPROVE searching. It is like the "dock" in Windows 7. Come on, a bad rip off of OSX, that I should pay 200 euro for? Think not.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I use google and bing, but each for different things.
When I want to know something that my mother knows, I use Bing. It is better, IME, at regular people knowledge searches.
When I want to know something that a nerd somewhere knows, I use google. Bing doesn't seem to have a clue about anything technical. Further, I run a few web sites and almost all my referral traffic is from Google, like 99.999999%. The rest are bookmarks and direct links, but not from Bing. When I search for a technical article on my site that is in the top 3 on google, Bing doesn't show my url on the first 3 pages of results.
Guess who ask search engines more questions? Moms or Nerds?
I do it like this: select some text, hotkey to search it
...
Meta+G = Google
Meta+W = Wikipedia
Meta+Y = YouTube
The hotkey runs a BASH script that queries klipper via D-BUS to get the highlighted text and constructs the parameters for firefox, depending on the parameters, which are set up in the hotkeys
I'll write a native program soon (and give it to the desktop-environment guys), that will support all search-extensions, not just some predefined ones...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The people who bring in the big bucks at MS is their Office Division, then their OS division, then everything else.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: microsoft search simply doesn't work.
... are advertising companies that do TV programmes.
And magazines are advertising companies that write articles in shinny paper.
And football teams are advertising companies that play football.
And you are a dumbo.
Opera tells me that I need an account for that. I don't want an account.
"For a comparison, Mozilla's annual profits are roughly equivalent to what Microsoft profits in a single day"
And still the entity that innovated was Mozilla Foundation.
That exemplifies perfectly the fact that Microsoft has not innovated, perhaps ever.
If you were to ask me, I would say Microsoft(no $ in there, by the way). I do not trust Google at all. It is not that I trust Microsoft so much as I do not trust Google at all. The fact that Google is just an advertising company that does search compared to Microsoft actually having products to support itself is a major factor in my decision.
--
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Yes, the signature is a dead givaway. Not to make premature conclusions on this particular post, but I am looking for a catchy term for explaining some perplexing moderation scores... For related activities, we already have 'astroturfing' and 'sock puppets'...
Would you think 'mod socking' appropriate? I tentatively define it as: closely or loosely concerted action between some posters and modders to artificially mod up comments.
And "'" for link search. I don't use it very often, but it's very handy for those few time I do.
I always wonder how much they are losing on their cashback program. It wouldn't suprise me if the vendor shares some of the cost, but MS must be paying some of it as well. Sites like fatwallet and other deal sites constantly have threads on how to game the bing cashback system with the best keywords for the highest cashback amounts. I have never used bing as a search engine, but I have received over $450 in bing cashback for things that I would have purchased anyway (I got a lot of it from helping people purchase Dell computers and having them go through a bing cashback link to kind of pay me back for configuring the computer for them).
Anyway, I am sure there are many more people who have received more than me. I guess it helps them that they can claim greater click-through numbers, but if it wasn't for the 5%-20% back that sites offer, I wouldn't bother going to Bing in the first place. I wonder what is going to happen when they realize they can't keep paying out the large cashback amounts. I am sure their click-throughs will drop by half or more.
i think that maybe CTRL+W or ALT+F4 may be more appropriate in his case...
I think that warning is rather unwarranted...
given that nobody reads the articles anyway.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Windows XP had very serious problems until Service Pack 2 was released. Microsoft Office is a mess, in my opinion. It is also an attempt to lock in users with an undocumented file design.
...but thanks to that warning, I'm not reading this one.
Fuck interstitials.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Stop trying to copy people and do some innovating, y'know that thing you're always saying you should have the freedom to do (and not have the DOJ stopping you).
Apple is making loads of money and it isn't even in the advert business (yet, iPhone OS 4 will bring them into it).
Imagine that... Too dumb to know much of anything about the tools you use. Seems to be a common issue around here.
I can understand that they can expect to lose money for a while chasing Google. However they are headed towards losing a BILLION dollars per quarter!!!!!!!
That is way too much money being lost. They are definitely doing things wrong.
They have been at this for quite a while despite Bing be relatively new.
If you have a stable operating system then boot time is kinda secondary.
Bing is Bung - serves them right for trying to monopolise EVERYTHING....
Or is it merely to try to screw-up someone else & maintain a monopolist's position. Well, whatever, M$ is failing & good...
for when they announce to shareholders and industry analysts that they have lost about US$1.1 billion chasing after the Google train ... just so comforting. In ten years time will M$ be flushing perhaps 5 to 10 Billion shareholder dollars down the toilet annually,still chasing that Google search train ? What kind of idiots invest in a company such as this ? What kind of liars/cheats would recommend such a destructive force ?
I prefer Classic Slashdot.