Microsoft Betting on Bing for Mobile Search

msmoriarty writes "Bing is a still a money loser for Microsoft, and the calls for the company to sell it off are growing. But according to long-time Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, dumping Bing is just not going to happen. 'While the world sees Bing as a distant No. 2 search engine, Microsoft brass and bean counters see Bing as a reusable component and asset that will be built into more and more products. Those who think Microsoft will discard Bing or sell it to the highest bidder are dead wrong — that won't happen now or any time soon.'"

Comments

Re:Google Monopoly

[AvitarX]

Monopolies are legal in the US.

You need to demonstrate their strong-arming or abuse, or the harm to the consumer.

The fact that we got easy access to a new search engine recently demonstrates that the consumer isn't harmed.

With just a 27% share of the U.S. search market

[hardtofindanick]

I don't really understand why owning 27% of the search market is being shown as a failure. It may be below expectations, but it is still considerable. The search results are more decent then ever and at least google felt threatened enough to honeypot it. BTW I still use Google.

Re:With just a 27% share of the U.S. search market

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's the "losing money" part that shareholders tend not to like... Market share certainly has its uses; but it isn't an end in itself. Some investors are more patient than others; but sooner or later they will demand that either the division stop losing money, demonstrate how its utility to other divisions that aren't losing money makes up for its costs, or be scrapped.

If anything, the fact that Microsoft is the #2 search player, commands almost a third of the market, and still isn't making money at it probably makes people more nervous about them. Losing money temporarily in order to gain enough marketshare for some sort of economies of scale/mindshare breakthrough/whatever pixie dust is floating around is practically a comforting tradition for tech market types. Being an established player and still dragging out each year in the red just makes you unpopular...

Re:With just a 27% share of the U.S. search market

[m2vq]

What I found stupid about the whole thing was the sentence

While the world sees Bing as a distant No. 2 search engine

Yeah yeah, slashdot has the FAQ point about it being US-centric site. But including the word "world"? That maybe true for US, but it varies by country. For example Yandex is the largest search engine in Russia and Baidu is in China, and they both lead Google by miles.

At around 30% marketshare

[PickyH3D]

What incentive does Microsoft have to ceding search (and search related ads) to Google? It has nearly 30% US marketshare and it's growing (combined with Yahoo, which uses Bing for its backend).

When Bing first launched, Bing scared Google and forced them to start innovating again. Competition is good after all. Even if Bing dies off, I see no advantage, as a consumer, to have Bing disappear. I also see no advantage, for (not as) an investor to cede that entire domain to one of their two biggest competitors. Throw away the entire investment that has signs of paying off in the future, and give a major investor even more money to play with to cut into your market? That's really the best idea?

Having some competition certainly helps spur production and innovation. After all, Windows Vista took so long because they had no serious competition until OS X started seriously stealing the spotlight. Apple gave them a good reason to produce faster, and at a higher quality (Windows 7).

Re:At around 30% marketshare

[MightyMartian]

Vista took so long because they had to keep turfing Longhorn functionality because all those teams had produced virtually nothing that was ready for market. Vista was about as much evidence as anyone needed that Microsoft had lost its edge. Even now, Windows XP is still newer versions of Windows worst competition.

As to Bing, Microsoft has thrown so much money at it and basically bought the penetration they would have gotten if they had just left up msn.com or live.com as the default page. It has been an extraordinary waste of money, costing well in excess of the vast and largely pointless investment in building THE web portal that Microsoft has been trying since Windows 95.

Bing's big victory so far? Why, Yahoo, as it sinks into the forgettable soup of yesterday's companies, started using it as its engine.

2.6 Billion In Losses Just This Past Year

[AddisonW]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/business/bing-becomes-a-costly-distraction-for-microsoft-breakingviews.html

I don't know how anyone could possibly suggest anyone would ever dream of wanting to buy Microsoft's failed search engine.

Why Microsoft keeps Bing around

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked in Bing for a several years as an SDE until leaving recently. The Online Services Division in which Bing resides is losing money at an alarming rate. In the last fiscal year ending June 2011, OSD lost $2.5 billion.

Why is Microsoft in this space? I heard it from Bill Gates himself at a team function last year. If Microsoft does not put up a fight in online search, Google will continue to encroach on Microsoft's cashcows, Windows and Office, with their product offerings. I don't think anyone in Microsoft really is driven to make an honest-to-goodness better search experience; Bing is just Microsoft's 70%-Achieved beachhead in online search just to keep Google honest.

Change. The. Name.

[blair1q]

If anything makes me have no respect for Microsoft's search engine, it's the embarassingly stupid name they've given it.

"Google" is fun. "Bing" is childish. And tying it to a trademarked sound is just brand-development masturbation right in the face of your potential customers.

Quit it.

Re:Sad

[orient]

Feel free to give your data to Bing, by searching with Bing.

strength and weakness

[Tom]

We've seen this pattern before. Repeatedly. MS greates strength and greatest weakness at the same time is their ability and will to stay beyond losses that would've ruined most smaller companies.

Sometimes, this staying power makes them pull through in the end. Sometimes, it means they just burn even more money.

It's the typical MS way. No, they won't sell Bing. They will hang on to it until it either turns a profit, or is so dead that not even the braindead who fall for 419 scams would buy it anymore. Then they will kill it silently, when the press is looking the other way. They don't like to admit failure.