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Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

nytimes.com

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Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#31

Post by whatusername »

angrycoder wrote: post #20
jerf wrote: post #2

"But [Bing] has more value to a buyer that could bring it traffic." If Microsoft can't bring it traffic... who can ? Whatever other company you cite, can its putative advantage compete with owning the default browser? (Wikipedia still has IE in the lead [1], though an ever-thinner one.) Even mighty Facebook can't really compete with that sort of advantage. Honest question, interested in the answers. [1]: http://en.wi…

Microsoft doesn't have the content or services that are more compelling than its competitors to generate traffic. Google has search, gmail, google docs, you tube, etc etc. Facebook has your friends. Microsoft has a bunch of second place also rans like bing, hotmail, msn, etc.

I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure hotmail is bigger than gmail. And Office365 might be similar in size to g:docs.

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#32

Post by icebraining »

blackboxxx wrote: post #28

Bing isn't different enough to gain mindshare, and it's search results can't compete with Google (or even Blekko's IMO). You know what would be disruptive? A search engine for physical spaces. When I'm scouring my apartment for a matching sock or my keys, I'd do a search and the missing item would be located. I don't know how, but someone should do this. EDIT: No, I'm not high. Just weird.

Just in your apartment and car? Perfectly possible. Just put RFID tags in everything and a bunch of readers on walls and inside the car.

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#33

Post by kinkora »

jad wrote: post #24
quizbiz wrote: post #19

This is interesting: I know Apple is sitting on a lot of cash. A lot. I think it would be fascinating to see Apple purchase Bing and rebrand it. With search built into the iPhone and the future value of mobile search in mind, I think it would be near foolish for Apple to miss this opportunity. Otherwise, no matter how well the iPhone does, Google will still always have its hand in mobile advertising money. But what d…

Apple is a very focused company. They build nice gadgets and sell them for nice profit margins. Everything they do is directed toward that goal. Entering the search business means entering the online advertising business. They don't know anything about that business; just look at how iAds is working out. Steve Jobs himself said directly at one of the All Things D conferences something like (paraphrase), "We don't wan…

I'm not disagreeing with your premise but I would like to note that always take Steve Job's comments with a pinch of salt. At the (2003) All Things D conference, he said:

There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldnit type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think itis going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already. "And people accuse us of niche markets." I get a lot of pressure to do a PDA. What people really seem to want to do with these is get the data out . We believe cell phones are going to carry this information. We didnit think weid do well in the cell phone business. What weive done instead is weive written what we think is some of the best software in the world to start syncing information between devices. We believe that mode is what cell phones need to get to. We chose to do the iPod instead of a PDA. (source: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Steve_Jobs_No_Tablet_...)

He specifically said no tablets and Apple wont' do well in the cell phone business yet 4 years later, out comes the iPhone and 7 years on, the iPad.

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#34

Post by pedalpete »

quizbiz wrote: post #19

This is interesting: I know Apple is sitting on a lot of cash. A lot. I think it would be fascinating to see Apple purchase Bing and rebrand it. With search built into the iPhone and the future value of mobile search in mind, I think it would be near foolish for Apple to miss this opportunity. Otherwise, no matter how well the iPhone does, Google will still always have its hand in mobile advertising money. But what d…

Isn't the exact same reasoning for Microsoft to operating Bing? Bing is baked into WP7 pretty deep, and although sales of WP7 devices are off to a slow start, the marketplace is growing nicely, and the reviews are positive.

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#35

Post by azakai »

Duff wrote: post #17

The Times misses Microsoft's strategy. You don't need to be better than Google, just be good enough so that when Google screws up, they can swoop in. Microsoft losing $2.6B is like me dropping $5 on a crapy sandwich. Microsoft has successfully executed this strategy several times.

Exactly. Microsoft never expected Bing to make money, it's just a way to apply pressure on Google. Which helps Microsoft compete with Google elsewhere.

Of course there is a chance Google will mess up, in which case Bing might become profitable. But not likely.

In any case, the current situation is good for everyone but Google. Microsoft can afford to spend the money and it makes Google's life a little harder. Everyone else benefits since Google is not left unchallenged. We have seen what monopolies can do in computing.

Let's face it, if Microsoft doesn't burn money on this, there aren't many alternatives (the alternatives that do exist are either very limited or in fact dependent on Microsoft in some way).

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#36

Post by robryan »

dmnd wrote: post #23
Steko wrote: post #11

The big deal here is a lack of efficiency. Apparently revenue is $2.5 bln and losses are also $2.5 bln. That means with double the revenue (i.e. nearly Google's market share) they'd barely be in the black. Maybe we're missing something. How much of these billions in losses are not Bing? I mean most of it is surely Bing but Azure and Win 365 are probably substantial investments.

> That means with double the revenue (i.e. nearly Google's market share) You're assuming search revenue and market share are linearly related. The whole point of the Bing/Yahoo deal was that they are not - as market share increases, revenue increases superlinearly.

Yeah, most marketers don't want to put the time into the platform because it won't get them anywhere near the amount of traffic as Google does. I think this is slowly turning around though as the tools around bing are catching up and marketers are seeing pretty good returns on the traffic they actually do get on there. Also tools that let you manage the same campaign on Google and Bing are getting better.

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#37

Post by piyush_ranjan »

angrycoder wrote: post #20
jerf wrote: post #2

"But [Bing] has more value to a buyer that could bring it traffic." If Microsoft can't bring it traffic... who can ? Whatever other company you cite, can its putative advantage compete with owning the default browser? (Wikipedia still has IE in the lead [1], though an ever-thinner one.) Even mighty Facebook can't really compete with that sort of advantage. Honest question, interested in the answers. [1]: http://en.wi…

Microsoft doesn't have the content or services that are more compelling than its competitors to generate traffic. Google has search, gmail, google docs, you tube, etc etc. Facebook has your friends. Microsoft has a bunch of second place also rans like bing, hotmail, msn, etc.

hotmail is the biggest email provider out there. gmail is an also ran at number 3. Yahool mail is no. 2

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#38

Post by simonw »

Duff wrote: post #17

The Times misses Microsoft's strategy. You don't need to be better than Google, just be good enough so that when Google screws up, they can swoop in. Microsoft losing $2.6B is like me dropping $5 on a crapy sandwich. Microsoft has successfully executed this strategy several times.

"The Times misses Microsoft's strategy" - the article doesn't represent the opinion of the NY Times - it's an opinion piece. There's a disclaimer on this version of it: http://blogs.reuters.com/columns/2011/07/22/microsoft-ought-...

(Pointing this out because I used to work for a newspaper, and it was always frustrating seeing people mistake opinion pieces for the official editorial line of the paper)

Re: Bing Becomes a Distraction for Microsoft

#39

Post by barista »

brown9-2 wrote: post #14
aresant wrote: post #4

"A sale would be a boon for Microsoft’s investors. . . the unit would be worth about $11 billion." So a boon to investors is a short-term sale that's the equivalent of 4.6% of MSFT's market cap (235b)? And in exchange surrender an asset that's fundamental to their mobile strategy (with NOKIA blowing in the wind towards MSFT) and strategic in distracting Google from eating their primary lunch? I am a proponent of FOCU…

But is there any evidence that either of those strategies are working?

definitely working better than giving up search and handing over keys of the biggest money making opportunity on the internet to the competitior.
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