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Microsoft To Sell Bing Maps, Advertising Sections

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the trimming-the-fat dept.

UnknowingFool writes: Microsoft has announced that they will sell some Bing Maps technology to Uber and their advertising business to AOL. About 1,300 employees are expected to be offered positions in their new companies. CEO Nadella said previously that there would be "tough choices" to be made. Some outside analysts have said neither venture was very profitable for Microsoft and may have been unprofitable at times.

9 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Altough I agree by The-Ixian · · Score: 2

    Perhaps they will go all in on Nokia HERE maps...

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  2. Competition by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As much as I hate Microsoft for all the crap they've pulled over the years, Google should have competition. Without competition they'll become......well, like Microsoft.

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    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re: Competition by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In technology platform wars, there tends to only be two major competitors at any given time, with the third being niche at best, and almost always ignored by the dominant two anyways, so it doesn't change things much IMO.

    2. Re: Competition by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 2

      BTW for historical reference:

      Sega Genesis, SNES, and Turbo Graphix 16

      Windows, Mac OS, and OS/2.

      Android, iOS, Windows Phone

      There are a lot of examples, but while people have heard of the third, basically nobody uses it.

    3. Re: Competition by afidel · · Score: 2

      MS Office/Corel Office/SmartSuite, though that one's a bit murkier since MS Office was clearly #1 pretty early on with the other two fighting over the scraps in specific industries (legal for Corel, wherever IBM could swing it for SmartSuite)

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  3. Deal by puddingebola · · Score: 2

    Specifics of the deal said this would make Bing the default search provider for AOL for 10 years instead of Google. Google still has around 64% of the search market, but numbers seem to indicate that Microsoft is gaining ground on them with 20% market share. Rik van der Kooi, vice president of Microsoft’s ad business, said Bing is a self-sustaining business, or "sustainable and standalone." https://fortune.com/2015/06/30...

    1. Re:Deal by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

      Is the "default search provider for AOL" really that prestigious a title to seek? It's been quite some time since AOL had a decent user group. Next up: Microsoft's Bing to become the official search provider of MySpace!

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  4. NOT selling Bing Maps by pavon · · Score: 4, Informative

    The headline is horribly misleading. Microsoft is absolutely not selling Bing Maps. They are selling the team that has been gathering street-view imagery. The companies haven't released many details on the deal, but you can imagine that since Uber already has a fleet of vehicles driving around they could pay drivers to capture this imagery while delivering people and save a fair bit of money.

  5. Executive positions in France by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The ones sold to Uber are lucky since I hear Uber is looking for some more executives for their office in France.