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Microsoft Has Lost $5.5 Billion On Bing Since 2009
Landing on slashdot for the first time, MightyMartian writes "According to CNN Money, Microsoft has lost $5.5 billion on Bing since its launch in 2009. But it gets even better. If you include Microsoft's other online offerings, all the way back to 2007, the losses are somewhere in the neighborhood of $9 billion. But not to worry, analysts expect Bing to become profitable in 'three to four years.'"
Microsoft has been trying to build a web portal for what now? Fifteen years or so? If throwing money at this problem were all it took, they'd own the web by now. And as the article notes, at least some of its increased market share has come from Yahoo, which is using the Bing engine, which means they're basically cannibalizing their largest web infrastructure customer.
If I start eating my own body parts, does that mean a net increase in protein?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The cost of entry is very low. Getting 0.1% of marketshare is cheap, and would get you enough money to climb to 1% and so on.
It is expensive to get the capacity of Google from day 1 but the budget to start a decent moderate-traffic search engine is not null but is within the reach of thousands of companies.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The original point is that Microsoft doesn't always support their technologies. They can abandon them at any time.
If you kept your accounting records in Microsoft Money, then you were screwed the moment they dropped support. If you bought all your music in the PlaysForSure (ironically named) format, then you were screwed.
Someone countered with "Silverlight is neat and I used it" which doesn't really refuse the notion that big companies can leave you hanging at any time.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.