Microsoft Has Lost $5.5 Billion On Bing Since 2009 217
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 $9 billion. But not to worry, analysts expect Bing to become profitable in 'three to four years.'"
It's an investment. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also just corporate finances. Even if Microsoft's online division loses money, it gains them recognizition and sales elsewhere. The one good thing about Microsoft is that they tend to stick to what they started. It's not like Google who might just cancel the product you're using the next day.
So if they don't keep investing to it now, they're basically letting Google have 99% of western search engine market. I really don't want that happen either - competition is good.
Not so sure that Bing makes M$ money elsehwere (Score:2)
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?
Re:Not so sure that Bing makes M$ money elsehwere (Score:5, Informative)
That's Microsoft's big problem. There's nowhere to go but down...
Frankly, I think dumping 9 billion bucks into your online offerings and still not being able to shake an any substantial way the market leader, no matter how you measure it, cannot be referred to as a successful strategy. I suspect that, if you include all of Microsoft's expenditures all the way back to its original MSN portal back in the Win95/Win98 days, the amount of money it has spent is far more than nine billion dollars.
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They seem to have run out of ideas, like Dell in the hardware space. Waiting for someone to spot/create a market and then validate by growing it before making any move means you're always simply too late. It's not fatal in hardware, or even in software, but in online where network effects are even stronger, 2 years late = very uphill battle. See Windows Phone, bing, Azure, ...
MS need to be first... somewhere... and then milk that relentlessly, like Google is doing with search and online profiling.
Buying Sky
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First to ruin Skype???
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Skype already ruined Skype.
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Wait till they re-write it in .Net ...
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I think dumping 9 billion bucks into your online offerings and still not being able to shake an any substantial way the market leader
That is a bit scary as well. There is only Microsoft actively going against Google (at least in the markets that affect me the most - the western world). Google is sitting on a pile of personal information, a real goldmine that their advertiser client would dream to tap. You need some serious competition on the market to help them continue to make the right decision (i.e. leave our data alone)
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They are going down and will continue to do so. They will be lucky to find a balance and just stay alive.
People are buying laptops and desktops, and for the vast percentage, it is a MS operating system. Apple gained market share and MS went down. That might not last forever, especially if Google actually does something with an OS that takes off. Windows 8 really really needs to be good here.
Now the whole new thing is tablets. MS is not exactly very strong here. They are just starting out with their ne
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Do you really think they're going to get more exposure for, say Office365 on Bing then they would if they just bought ads off of Google, or hell, just put ads in major newspapers?
Re:It's an investment. (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft "stick" to what they started? Seems to me that they throw out shit all the time. Bing is a perfect example of where they also throw out customer-facing services. Just a few years ago it was "Live Search," which failed terribly as a brand, so they threw it out and started paying people [clubbing.com] to use Bing to pump up their search rankings.
You may also remember Microsoft Zune and Kin. Perhaps you blinked and missed those?
Or maybe you just notice the Google ones more because, like me, you find them more useful and thus actually feel the impact when they shutdown a project.
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Hailstorm, Silverlight, Passport, MSN, Bob...
MS is the same as any other large company. Outside of their proven revenue generators, they throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Not that I mind competition in any space, but still...
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Silverlight is actually great for line of business apps, but you'd never know it because they are only going to be found in corporate intranets.
It's hugely popular though, and a great platform for what we use it for. We tried going down the Java road and saw the costs and timelines... said "fuck it" and got the Silverlight project done underbudget and ahead of time. Now I'm just waiting for my bonus that will never come :p
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Microsoft has been removing Silverlight from their own websites and replacing it with HTML5. And Metro Tiles and Windows App Store apps won't support Silverlight. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest your project probably could have been accomplished with Ruby. JS, Python or a number of other technologies just as fast.
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Sure it could, but then we have no baseline for performance either. Silverlight sandboxes everything so we know exactly what result we are going to get. Plus, we have no ruby/python developers in house, only Java/.NET, and Silverlight was the lesser of two evils for us.
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Microsoft has been removing Silverlight from their own websites and replacing it with HTML5. And Metro Tiles and Windows App Store apps won't support Silverlight.
Neither of which are relevant for GP's use case, which is internal app deployed on a corporate intranet.
Re:It's an investment. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Well duh (Score:3)
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.
Re:It's an investment. (Score:5, Insightful)
...unless you're a developer.
How many platforms has Microsoft killed in a short timeframe in the name of the future?
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Clearly at least one too few, they still haven't managed to chase off all them pesky developers.
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Well I know /. had a article just a month or two ago about closing down .net or one of there other developer things.
Re:It's an investment. (Score:4, Insightful)
WPF. It was supposed to be an all-new programming paradigm, but was too little, too late. Performance was abysmal, and this never got fixed. Now it gets replaced with WinRT.
http://fixwpf.org/ [fixwpf.org]
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WPF is still supported, though, and will continue to be for years to come (if not decades). Microsoft never drops support for a widely used technology until it's well and truly obsolete. Heck, VB6's support date doesn't end until 2020. By that point, it'll be old enough to drink, vote, and serve in the army.
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Competition is good, but Bing is hardly worthy competition.
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From a utility perspective, Bing doesn't have to be competitive. If Microsoft can force market share through other manipulations, it all amounts to the same thing in the end. Except, of course, for the users, but they don't count.
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Unless you're using Virtual Earth [msdn.com].
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Or Bob. Good luck calling Microsoft and asking for support after you accidentally moved the fire out of the fireplace and on to the sofa.
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VB6 is still in extended support after 13 years and Silverlight is still going.
VB6 I'll grant you, and I wouldn't have used that as an example myself. However, while it hasn't been killed off, Silverlight has been blatantly sidelined from its original marketed intent of being a Flash-killer.
One may argue that MS made the right decision there, but it doesn't alter the fact that they changed their minds!
While Silverlight still remains in some form as one of the development platforms for Windows Phone 7, I don't know how similar that version is to the Flash-killer, how much overlap there
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Netflix does use silverlight for PC streaming though (which blows). I suspect that has more to do with Reed Hastings being on the board at MSFT.
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Completely forget about Netflix and Hulu?
I don't live in the United States, so I don't use Netflix. Hulu- that officially isn't available here either, though I'm well aware I could use a proxy except that I'm not enough into TV to have considered bothering. :-)
Which is beside the point....
And the countless amount of TV channels that use Silverlight on their websites, even in my country. Silverlight offers DRM while Flash doesn't, and that's why it will stay relevant even with Flash and HTML5 video.
...well, not really. It depends what you mean by "relevant". Those are existing uses that were created beforehand. Sure, it's quite possible- if not probable- that they'll continue using Silverlight for that reason, but that's a still niche.
It says nothing a
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Silverlight never got off the ground as a Flash killer, but it was definitely being used quite a lot for intranet "rich web" apps.
As for VB6, as GP notes, it's still supported - heck, Win7 ships with msvbvm60.dll. VB6 IDE will not run directly on Win7, but it will happily run in XP Mode. So you can develop in VB6 today on Win7 Pro or higher (don't ask me how I know... ugh).
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No that's called investing. When a company get money from the bank or investor, they also compete with money from unrelated activities.
Also the product is not free - they are not a charity - they expect people to pay for their service: ads placement. Giving away the search engine is a mean to capture eyeballs and therefore sell the ads placement for more money.
A good thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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and people looking to get away from the increasingly all-encompassing Google have a second choice.
And that choice is a plucky underdog by the name of... Microsoft.
Woot?
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Or DuckDuckGo, who is going back to the roots of what made Google good in the first place: clean interface and decent, mostly spam free results.
Re:A good thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Why is getting 0.1% of marketshare cheap?
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and people looking to get away from the increasingly all-encompassing Google have a second choice.
When did they get rid of Yahoo, Alta Vista and Lycos?
It worked with the XBOX (Score:2)
MS took a lot of arrows when the XBOX came out and they lost a ton of money... I think they are profitable now.
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MS took a lot of arrows when the XBOX came out and they lost a ton of money... I think they are profitable now.
Last I saw they were making a small operating profit but were still a long way from paying back the development costs. And they'll have to build a new Xbox soon unless they want games to continue looking like a PC from 2005.
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I think the idea of bringing PC games to a console looks like a no-brainer now. PC stuff is so much cheaper now than six years ago I think they can do a new one without taking such a large loss on the hardware.
I guess we will see.
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They are no longer losing money year over year, but they are nowhere near making back the initial investment. And there is no guarantee at all that they ever will -- it will take them many more years and it seems extremely likely that before then games will no longer be played on consoles, in favor of e.g. mobile devices connected to TVs and controllers by wifi.
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Except that it doesn't really work that way, and they certainly aren't acting as though that was ever their intention. If their goal was an integrated ecosystem then you would be able to plug an XBOX controller into a Windows PC, insert an XBOX game and play it. Or plug a USB keyboard and mouse into an XBOX and run Windows programs. But you can't.
And it doesn't make any sense to say that XBOX customers will be more likely to buy Windows phones, because they have no real relation to one another -- they're no
Second choice? (Score:2)
I hate to break it to you, but Bing has a very long way to go to make it that far up the list.
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I'm a little confused. How do you do that on something like the web, where you can't actually force anybody to go to your website?
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In a sense you can with defaults in software. If your OS and/or browser default to a certain page, then many users either won't make the effort to change it, or don't know how to. Where I work, msn.com is the home page on every company computer by default. So even when people want to hit internal sites, they end up generating a page view for msn.com first.
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Considering that the vast bulk of PCs purchased in the last fifteen years default to one iteration or another of Microsoft's web portal, can you explain to me how that means Google can abuse its market position?
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That's the weird thing. The EU saw this as Microsoft abusing OS and browser market share to force people into their web offerings, forcing them to offer choice of default search engines. But every Fortune 500 company I've worked for still forces all their employees to use IE and defaults to Microsoft offerings through group policy. All those enterprise desktops add up.
In the US, the DoJ has accused Google of abusing market share by having their web sites linking to their own web sites. Yahoo and Microsoft h
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The problem with all the monopoly regulation is that it only triggers when you already have a monopoly, it doesn't nothing to prevent one from forming. Thus Google might get into trouble for things that all their competition are doing as well, because they (almost) have a monopoly in search.
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It isn't illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to block competition. Either the tactics themselves are wrong, or they aren't.
Just a little while (Score:5, Funny)
"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.
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I think you've pretty much hit in on the head. In five or ten years, will anyone give a shit that Linux didn't take a big chunk of the desktop market? It simply won't matter. Most home users, save for specific kinds of hobbyists (ie. gamers) will either be using discrete devices like smartphones and tablets or being using their entertainment systems (smart TVs, or hell, some punched up variant of the bloody Raspberry).
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>Linux desktop will never happen
I actually disagree. I have been following linux for ages (since about 95). And yes each and every year we say it will be the year of Linux. Well I think the year of Linux for me was 2011, three days ago for me. I have used Linux on and off throughout the years, and I always crawl back to Windows.
But now the processors are fast and powerful enough where apps like VMWare just work. There is also enough Linux software out there that you can get things done on Linux. And for
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Same here, the main things I do on my computer I can now do with either virtualization or a quick reboot. The last few things I was doing with Windows are either things which I don't need to do on a daily basis or which can be run in Wine. And if that fails, I can always boot up a surplused copy of Windows and virtualize it.
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I never understood what the whole "year of the Linux desktop" thing was, anyway.
I've used Linux pretty much exclusively on the desktop since around '97. I usually keep a Windows install around to play games, but that's about it.
For the type of stuff I do on a computer, Linux is what I prefer. The only reason I care about "marketshare" is driver support - the higher the marketshare, the more companies will release drivers and/or documentation for their hardware. There's a small amount of software that has
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I'm not so sure about that, as MS heats up its timetable for new releases, you're likely to see an increased number of people needing to choose between buying a new computer, leaving it as is with the security holes or moving on to Linux. Considering how ridiculously easy some of the Linux Distros have gotten and how much better the driver support is, it's not that hard to get people using it.
I switched my mother over to Linux because Vista wasn't acting very stable on her hardware, much quicker and fewer c
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5.5 Billion? (Score:2)
Microsoft...you would have gotten a better ROI building a moon base.
(Now waits for Apple to build a Moon Base)
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Called iMoon, and then Apple promptly sues the Japs and Americans for sending probes there and violating its IP because "they clearly ripped us off by booting thrusters on the ass end..."
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> Microsoft...you would have gotten a better ROI building a moon base.
Yeah, and then at least they'd have had world domination... oh, wait...
The marketing isn't helping (Score:2)
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.
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They don't have lock-in.
Linux is gaining on them, especially in nontraditional spaces, and Apple could rear up and eat their lunch at any moment.
Windows 8 is a very cagey reaction to that, as it's no longer Windows at all.
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In the business market, yes they still have lock-in. Hell, the small business I work at sells Linux appliances, and we still absolutely need Windows for many applications. Linux just doesn't have equivalent business applications, pure and simple.
And Windows 8, for all it's many changes, is still almost identical functionally to 7 (which might mean it won't sell well... but we'll see) they have just integrated a tablet-friendly interface with it. Again, how well that actually works and sells, we'll see, but
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Video games are a driver issue. Windows gives the computer over entirely to the game. Linux does too, but has more niggles with card interfaces because it has no consistent relationship with card vendors.
That could change if the card vendors realize they can package games for something other than Windows. Like, say, Android. Then the card vendor has total control of the interface.
There's no Angry Birds desktop for Windows.
3 to 4 years? (Score:2)
That's like 3-4 generations, in technology...
Wow (Score:2)
That's a lot of Bing bling.
Don't worry (Score:2)
They'll make up for it in volume.
New name (Score:2)
Bing Cashback (Score:2)
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
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Microsoft & its Shareholders (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Companies don't really pay dividends anymore, unless they want to make a token gesture. There are a number of reasons for it: The tax law isn't set up to favor it, because dividends get taxed immediately whereas if the stock value is higher because the company is holding more assets then stockholders can defer paying taxes until they sell the stock. On top of that, corporate executives would generally rather buy other companies than issue dividends because it gives them control over more stuff -- why issue
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MSFT hasn't kept up with inflation or bank rates. I don't know why they have stockholders.
That was, in part, what anti-trust was about (Score:2)
Selling Chickens... (Score:2)
Sammy: Sol, You’re selling chickens for less than you’re paying for them. How do you make a profit?
Sol: One word, volume!
Win8 IE+Bing lock-in will succeed (Score:4, Informative)
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?
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No, you will not be able to swap out the browser in the Metro shell... Metro apps can only be installed via Microsoft's app store and their app store license explicitly forbids apps with GPL or GPL- like licenses.
Also, you can forget about getting around such limitations by implementing something like Chrome Frame... IE 10 won't support plugins!
Anti-competitive? (Score:3)
If Microsoft created Bing in order to deprive Google of ad revenues, how is this not "dumping" or "bundling" or some other illegal practice?
Patience (Score:2)
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.
Bing (Score:2)
Re:Don't forget Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Don't forget Amazon (Score:5, Informative)
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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 tha
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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 pro
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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.
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Would you like CNN's phone number so you can bitch to them directly?
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I don't think the situation was that different a decade ago when Google began its rise to the top. It was battling a nest of pretty embedded and dominant market players; Yahoo being at the top of that list. Google didn't have vast amounts of cash reserves or huge amounts of capital, but it did have a unique design paradigm and, most importantly, a product that actually delivered far better than anyone else. It built things up as it went along, rather than starting with huge fistfuls of money to throw at
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Google was the tiny upstart company that slew the giants. But this was back before search was a multibillion dollar industry. Do we forget how they made the first true search engine obsolete in a matter of months. Before Altavista search engines were fairly primitive. Altavista had the backing of Digital which was once a computing giant, and for its time an insane amount of bandwidth and computing power. Yahoo started using Altavista at some point, and eventually bought it up. Now altavista.com points at Ya