Microsoft Betting on Bing for Mobile Search 204
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.'"
Re:Google Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
At around 30% marketshare (Score:5, Insightful)
What incentive does Microsoft have to ceding search (and search related ads) to Google? It has nearly 30% US marketshare and it's growing [pcmag.com] (combined with Yahoo, which uses Bing for its backend).
When Bing first launched, Bing scared Google [cnet.com] 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).
2.6 Billion In Losses Just This Past Year (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/business/bing-becomes-a-costly-distraction-for-microsoft-breakingviews.html [nytimes.com]
I don't know how anyone could possibly suggest anyone would ever dream of wanting to buy Microsoft's failed search engine.
Re:With just a 27% share of the U.S. search market (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Yawn - Standard MS Fanboy Talking Points (Score:0, Insightful)
What is it with Microsoft fanboys? Every damn time they get caught spewing garbage they resort to the same juvenile 'I am a fan of X competing product/company'.
It's like they think everyone just joined the Internet yesterday.
Dude, give the act a rest. You aren't fooling anyone.
Re:Sad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bing just not as good search engine (Score:2, Insightful)
Look, the reason that Bing has as big a market share as it does is because new Windows installs still default to it, or to one of Microsoft's older offerings which in turn forward to Bing. Microsoft's secret to 30% success is basically people too lazy to go through Microsoft's absurdly complicated switch search engine functionality for the search bar. A lot of people just stick with MSN as their home page. So their market penetration has more to do with the remnants of fifteen years worth of Windows penetration.
As to Bing being a big deal on their mobile offerings, well whoopdeefuckingdoo. Everyone knows Microsoft will never be more than a bit player, so Microsoft's cut for Bing on Windows phones will be whatever percentage of that tiny percentage who don't bother to change their default search engine.
Microsoft's attempts at being the big web player have been nothing but failures from day one. They dominated the browser world, but for all of that, all they can do is throw obscene amounts of money at whatever-they're-calling-their-search-portal-today and grow with the same rate that they would have if they'd just left some modern standards compliant variant of the old MSN page up.
Re:At around 30% marketshare (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
strength and weakness (Score:4, Insightful)
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.