...is for them to ditch Live Search altogether.

MS exec "We've got more money than God and what the world needs now is a new search engine! Name a successful search engine with global brand identity."

MS minion "Google?"

MS exec "Apart from that one."

MS minion "Yahoo!?."

MS exec "And that one."

MS minion "...err..."

MS exec "See! I'm right. A gap in the market!" (Dreams of rising stock options and the keys to the executive toilets.)

How long will MS piss money away with its online services, and in particular Live Search, before they kill it off? RIP Live Search....

MS Exec 1: Let's use our strategy of nicking someone elses ideas, buying any small competitors they have and then muscling them out of the market.

MS Exec 2: Great idea. I hear that there is a lot of money in search engines.

...

some time later

...

MS Exec 1: Our product is pants compared to the competitors what do we do.

MS Exec 2: Historically we would release it anyway. Or we could try buying out the competition.

MS Exec 1: We can't afford to buy Google and Yahoo.

MS Exec 2: This is a free product! We can't con people into buying it!

MS Exec 1: Let's withdraw it then.

"Thank you for your interest in the product upload beta. Regrettably, we are discontinuing this program," said Microsoft."

Quite possibly regrettable, but did they really mean 'regretfully'...?

Typical thinking from Microsoft -

If you are searching the web, then you are are consumer searching for a product to spend money on.

FAIL.