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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.'"
Google is in the same situation elsewhere - they're spending LOTS of money to try to gain market share in Russia and China, but so far they're being crushed by the local giants Yandex and Baidu. These companies see it as a long-term campaing and have the means and money to do it. After all, it's still a lot easier to try to gain market share now than it will be in 20-30 years. Even if things are quite laid down now, they will be even more so all the time when time passes.
It's also just corporate finances. Even if Microsoft's online division loses money, it gains them recognizition and sales elsewhere. The one good thing about Microsoft is that they tend to stick to what they started. It's not like Google who might just cancel the product you're using the next day.
So if they don't keep investing to it now, they're basically letting Google have 99% of western search engine market. I really don't want that happen either - competition is good.
This is a good thing because the search business is really cut throat and the cost of entry is too high for anyone else. Atleast Google is kept on toes by Bing, and people looking to get away from the increasingly all-encompassing Google have a second choice.
This space for rent.
I'm not so sure that you have it right when you say "Even if Microsoft's online division loses money, it games them recognition and sales elsewhere."
Microsoft has a near-monopoly on the operating system and office productivity. Isn't that how they make nearly all their money? How does Bing help with that?
"Analysts expect Bing to become profitable in 'three to four years."
That's about as long as it takes for Linux to reach the desktop.
-- Cheers!
Microsoft...you would have gotten a better ROI building a moon base.
(Now waits for Apple to build a Moon Base)
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
The first few commercials were creepy in lieu of quirky and I chalked it up to a fluke.
But they haven't gotten any less creepy. I actually feel like I'm getting germs whenever I use anything with the Bing logo on it.
That's like 3-4 generations, in technology...
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.
That's a lot of Bing bling.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
You seem to be underestimating the time bing has been around, it was launched on June 3, 2009, it's already been bleeding money for 2 years straight (and that's of course pretending it didn't exist as livesearch for years before that), and profitability is still not in visible reach yet.
They'll make up for it in volume.
Would you like CNN's phone number so you can bitch to them directly?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bling-Bling? Money wasted on shiny object...
Damn, forgot to log in.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
I wonder if Bing Cashback payouts are included in the losses? If you frequent any deal sites, they gave away a metric crapton of cash trying to push Bing as a shopping search engine. I'm sure they just considered this marketing. In all fairness, it worked to some degree. While Google is still my most used search engine, if I'm on a computer that's set up to default to Bing...I'll actually use Bing. It's a good search engine and I wouldn't have known that had I not participated in so many Bing Cashback deals. I still prefer Google, but if I'm just looking for quick results, why even bother to switch over if Bing's already loaded?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
The billion dollar machine that goes "BING".
Never really thought about it before, but this really shows how hard it is for an upstart to get a new idea into the tech world. The Google's & Microsoft's can afford to lose $9,000,000,000 before the product begins to turn a profit. A new company with a great web service idea, can't. The new kids on the block either need to have great marketing (for cheap) or an idea that hits the sweet spot long before any big company realizes the value of that idea.
I've never seen a company waste so much money just to become a growth stock again. They should have taken the massive amounts of money they spent on XBox and Bing and just given it to the stockholders.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Amazon was operating during a period of stupidly low standards for businesses. A more sane approach would have been to build up the business more slowly. They didn't need to take that approach because the market was flooded with investment capital, to the point where many firms would get money without any idea as to how to turn their idea profitable.
In MS' case, they've got few places they can spend the money they make from their primary businesses. It's either invest in something like search or concede that further growth isn't possible and just start issuing most of the money back in the form of dividends.
That's easy to do when interest rates are low and you can borrow lots of money easily. In fact that's the whole point of having said low interest rates in the first place. Governments see this as "stimulating the economy". Whether it's actual growth or just reckless behavior however remains to be seen.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
MS took a lot of arrows when the XBOX came out and they lost a ton of money... I think they are profitable now.
love is just extroverted narcissism
...using the billions made from the Windows monopoly to drive competitors out of other markets, another example would be the Xbox which sold for less than the production cost in order to get a foothold in the console market.
I hate to break it to you, but Bing has a very long way to go to make it that far up the list.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
But how long can MS expect its shareholders to put up with it just pissing money down every hole in the hopes that somehow it will stumble on another magic money printing machine? Their attempts to gain web dominance have surely seen them throw away a lot more than nine billion dollars, that's for Bing and its Live Search antecedent. They've been trying to muscle in to this market for years. If I were an investor, I'd seriously start asking what I was getting out of these vast bold money hemorrhaging products.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Sammy: Sol, You’re selling chickens for less than you’re paying for them. How do you make a profit?
Sol: One word, volume!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I fear that the Win8 metro shell will do a very good job of locking people in to IE and Bing. They'll both work "good enough" to prevent people from seeking superior alternatives. Will you even be able to swap out the browser in the metro shell? How much effort will it take to modify Chome, Firefox, etc to be metro-compiant?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
If Microsoft created Bing in order to deprive Google of ad revenues, how is this not "dumping" or "bundling" or some other illegal practice?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Companies that don't strike out for new markets inevitably end up becoming irrelevant and out of business. Which is the main reason why you see Google and Apple going after so many markets that aren't considered they're core business. Well, technically, Apple already did that, but that's why they did it. Focusing on one area of business amplifies the risk from something going wrong.
its one of the things you can afford to have when you are sitting on that much of a stock pile of money.
its all about the long-term.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I pretty much cover my tracks online. Nothing as drastic
as using a proxie, but the normal stuff; delete ALL cookies
run a HOSTS file, Peerblock, use Spamhaus and change my
identity occasionally http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/
as a start.
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/searchspy/results.htm?fci=1?filter=0&qcat=web
is an old link that doesn't work anymore but would show what searches were
being processed at that time, it was an eye opener.
But with Google (the only search engine I use) I'm an open
book with my search terms. Which if used out of context could
come across badly.
I post to the Newsgroup: 24hoursupport.helpdesk, any subject is
valid and I search each to offer help, some of my searches are down
right abnormal.
I use Google as my dictionary "define:xxxxx" as well as spell checker.
Site specific as the results are far beyond the search ability of the site itself:
top 100 stories +directv site:slashdot.org
Using Google goes against everything I practice, but there is no way
I would allow Microsoft this search information. They have long
ago proved themselves unworthy of my trust.
Is Google any better? I'm putting a lot of faith in "Do no harm".
BTW: my slashdot.org account is the real me.
Never used Bing.
Liked his voice, and he worked well with Bob. And as for Dorothy Lamour ...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
For some reason their competitors' toolkits just aren't as flexible, as capable, as compatible. Maybe it's because other toolkit developers are idiots. Or maybe there's another reason why others find it difficult to compete with the OS developer in creating development tools.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"many of your future products."
Unless your English sucks as bad as your critical thinking, I would be interested to know how MS research will make it into my Linux desktop and Android phone?
Or are you so smitten with Ballmer that the concept of someone NOT buying Microsoft just doesn't occur to you?
Seriously, claiming Zune is still going strong because it is bundled free with phones that aren't selling. I also got a rm codec in mplayer, must mean realmedia is doing stellar trading.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You expect a bonus for doing an ActiveX the next generation?
If that is how you do IT, get used to not getting any bonuses.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Initially a money sink, expected to be profitable five years down the road... Wasn't that the same thing that happened to the original XBox?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Too many divisions that just got endless streams of cash piped into them with no foreseeable ROI and I think Ballmer's the one who is going to have be ducking flying chairs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.