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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!
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"
Bing is a decision engine, so they should be able to decide when to pull the plug...
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.
Isn't Office Live a response to Google Docs?
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.
Unfortunately for them, Microsoft's "Online Services Division" has a deeper fundamental problem than merely losing money.
That is, much of the money that they do manage to make, they make by cannibalizing MS server products sales. Now, I'm sure that they'd rather cannibalize their own server product sales than have Google/Amazon/assorted 3rd party penguin swarm datacenters eat them, cannibalism beats starvation after all; but that is still sort of a depressing mandate.
Their only "greenfield", so to speak, revenue opportunities are search(at which they are fairly tepid) or in providing "the-first-hit-is-really-cheap, also granular" access to various MS services(Exchange, Sharepoint, MS SQL, etc.) to tiny outfits that can't afford to do them in house(and, given SKUs like Small Business Server, we are talking pretty small outfits).
This is the easiest question around. We all know search engines save info on us when we use them. Who do you trust? Micro$oft or Google. Every time I ask this question everybody says "Google." Bing will never get past this question.
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.
Actually Bing has some features that outclass Google Search. Image search is so much better on Bing because it's dynamically loaded so you don't have to page through 20 times to get a full view of what's out there.
It would be nice if Bing, Yahoo, or whoever grabbed 30-50% of the search market. Microsoft scares me, but so does Google.
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.
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.
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.
What surprises me most is this.
Time and again MS is trying to enter a market, only to sustain huge losses in the beginning. Now Bing, before the Zune (ended in failure), the Xbox (lost a lot of money, still alive though, can't imagine it has made them any money overall even if it would be profitable by now), and before I'm sure they lost heaps of money entering the office suite market with OpenOffice, the webmail market with Hotmail, and so on. Only their OS business has made a constant profit it seems. And Office is doing well as well. But that's it.
On the other hand I have never heard about serious losses on Apple's side around the introduction of the iPod. Sure they lost money on some products, but not this kind of numbers.
Google came out of nothing: they started up in a dorm room, came with a good product, and won the hearts and minds of the world and grew from there to become the behemoth they are now.
Sun has likely lost money on development of StarOffice, now OpenOffice.org, but their product is steadily making inroads and I don't think they are still pumping much money in it. If only because they're not such a rich company any more.
Netscape burnt and died, and from its ashes Firefox has risen. Making heaps of money, going strong, doing well.
Now for the examples above you may give counter examples of failures but it seems MS is the king. They have so much money, they can buy their way into any market they like (and they do), but they can not come up with anything innovative, anything desirable.
"Competing on the world stage" may not be cheap, but I think it may help if Microsoft starts to develop their own products and their own ideas, instead of an "iPod killer", a "Google competitor", etc. That seems to me a failure from the start. You have to have your own product that stands on its own, and is not targeting a specific existing product. "Netscape killer" Internet Explorer won due to lock-in and abuse of monopoly, not for being better than Netscape. Microsoft for some reason doesn't manage to compete on quality and on merit, they just try to solve those issues by throwing a lot of money at it. And that's a waste in more ways than one. We need innovation - no matter where it comes from, but MS is not exactly a company that is innovative these days.
This CustomizeGoogle feature saves you from the hassle of paging through Google web search results. Whenever you navigate to the end of the page, you dont have to hit the next button. CustomizeGoogle automatically fetches next set of results and appends them to the bottom of the page.
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!
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.
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.
yes, it's better to go with the devil you know will eat you up and spit out your skeletal remains than go with a company which won the hearts and minds of customers to get their marketshare and has not proven to be even close to the evil which lurks inside One Microsoft Way. That makes so much sense.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Some people enjoy Colonoscopies too.
I'm just sayin'...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I hardly create Office documents and Google Docs allows me to not have to install the Office readers for the slim occasion when I need to read an MS Office document. I originally thought the readers are lightweight but they also require updating during patch Tuesdays.
Ugh. Uninformed post rated highly by fanbois...
Time and again MS is trying to enter a market, only to sustain huge losses in the beginning
Yeah, I'm with you. MS Word was a big loser at first against Word Perfect...
ow Bing, before the Zune (ended in failure), the Xbox (lost a lot of money, still alive though, can't imagine it has made them any money overall even if it would be profitable by now), and before I'm sure they lost heaps of money entering the office suite market with OpenOffice, the webmail market with Hotmail, and so on. Only their OS business has made a constant profit it seems. And Office is doing well as well. But that's it.
WTF? Microsoft's model has *always* been:
1) Be the platform everybody else uses.
2) Watch new companies prove business models,
3) Spend the money made in #1 like water to build in the (now proven) business model,
4) Advertise like crazy.
5) Profit!
On the other hand I have never heard about serious losses on Apple's side around the introduction of the iPod. Sure they lost money on some products, but not this kind of numbers.
I guess you never heard of the 1990s?
Sun has likely lost money on development of StarOffice, now OpenOffice.org, but their product is steadily making inroads and I don't think they are still pumping much money in it. If only because they're not such a rich company any more.
Didn't you hear that there is no "Sun" anymore. It's now called "Oracle"... how's life under that rock?
Netscape burnt and died, and from its ashes Firefox has risen. Making heaps of money, going strong, doing well.
Mozilla (the "for-profit" arm of the Mozilla foundation) made about 72 million. While not bad, it's hardly "heaps of money" for a product used by too many millions to count. For a comparison, Mozilla's annual profits are roughly equivalent to what Microsoft profits in a single day. I'm not saying this to knock Mozilla particularly, since I type this in Firefox 3.6. But this "heaps of money" thing is just.... you know.
"Competing on the world stage" may not be cheap, but I think it may help if Microsoft starts to develop their own products and their own ideas, instead of an "iPod killer", a "Google competitor", etc. That seems to me a failure from the start.
When has Microsoft done any different? See their business model above. MS's big deal with IBM was a resell of a hackish copy of a the dominant operating system - CPM.
...MS is not exactly a company that is innovative these days.
... or at any other point in its highly profitable history.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
One large problem is the bright folks at Microsoft can't innovate on anything that could possibly lead to a loss of revenue of Windows products.
Of course. That is an issue. Though it seems they do invest a lot now in on-line services, including real improvements to IE's standards compliance.
On the user interface field they are being taken over on all sides by Apple and even Linux. There is so much innovation done there - MS doesn't have a proper touch interface to compete with the iPhone/iPad OS, for example. Of course MS has their legacy - there is no reason not to keep the old interface and allow the option of a new experimental one. Maybe even a few experimental interfaces. Let the power users find them and try them out - and listen to what the market thinks about it.
I strongly believe that it is not the underlying hardware that counts any more (yesteryear's is more than good enough for 99% of us - save hardcore gamers and hardcore CAD developers and so). It is not much the OS that counts any more (it just has to work, stable and secure - who cares what's under the hood), it is just the user interface. And there is no reason why MS can not do anything good there.
Computing is moving on-line: the browser is getting important. MS seems to understand this.
Computing is also moving more towards hand held devices. Like the iPad. MS is missing out on this.
Desktop computing as we had it will remain - the basic office work and gaming and web browsing on the "big" screen. MS is strong there now, but with the experiments going on in their competitor's products it is only a matter of time before someone finds the holy grail of desktop user interfaces and the competition really takes off. The Windows technical lock-in (mainly MS Word) is slowly dissolving already.
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
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.