"Bing is actually a successful product for Microsoft"
compared to vista maybe....the statement above is missing the icon...
Microsoft’s new chief executive has told us what he’s not going to do - sell Bing or Xbox - but not what is he going to do. So far, all we’re hearing is a lot of "no". Speaking at a technology event in California, Nadella has been reported and quoted on Twitter to have ruled out the sale of both Xbox and Bing. On Xbox, …
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You have to differentiate between Bing the technology and Bing the website.
Bing is the power behind most search services in Windows 8 and Windows Server. They use the same technology as the Bing web site to search local machines and corporate data stores. Selling off Bing the technology would cripple Microsoft's OS services. It is also the power behind Cortana.
Bing the website is a public show case for the technology and a very small part of what Bing "is".
Selling off the technology doesn't make any sense. Shuttering the web portal, or selling that off, could make some sense, but they have spent time building up the brand - look at all of the Bing branded apps that come with Windows nowadays.
Spinning off Bing would be a very short-sighted move. It's not going to dethrone google, but without the backing of Microsoft it would fail, and Microsoft need it to exist simply because handing the whole game to the chocolate factory would be suicidal. If they don't have an ecosystem of their own which can at least seem to challenge google, they are doomed, and search is a big part of that.
Where does the 30% search share figure for Bing come from by the way? That sounds more like a USA figure rather than a global / Western world number. I don't think I know anyone who uses Bing, to be honest. If I met someone who said they did they would probably get the same sort of reaction as if they had admitted to being Seventh Day Advent Hoppists - confusion and disbelief.
Agreed. Microsoft really need Bing. Ignoring the stupid name and poor search results (although they are much better than they used to be), having a large, backed competitor for Internet Search is important for the industry. "Google It" is already a generic term for Internet Search, it's important that there are genuine alternatives as otherwise a company in a monopoly position will not improve and will instead exploit the situation. Microsoft should know this...
Outside English speaking countries, the services offered by Bing are very mediocre.
I use it from time to time when searching in English, as it sometimes gives results where Google fails to bring up anything relevant. But in German it is pretty poor. That probably also explains why the UK will get Cortana towards theend of the summer, whilst Germany and other non-English speaking countries won't get it until Q2 2015, according to rumours.
It is a shame, when it works, it works very well; but the non-English non-US side needs a lot of work.
"The trend will be to use an "online personal assistant" to perform the search."
"And he needs to do all this while maintaining a rather successful Windows business"
Well, good luck with this one. Win XP/7/8 are the same thing with only the GUI changing, people have become aware of this, and PC laptops and desktops are soon to be history. I see as much Windows future in this landscape as there was OSF/1 on X86.
Only junior sysadmins that can't do Linux will be the customer base of Windows servers, and that's not gonna make his numbers.
Win XP/7/8 are the same thing with only the GUI changing,
Other than support for newer hardware interfaces, what else is there really to add? OSs have been pretty mature for a good while now.
PC laptops and desktops are soon to be history.
That's very doubtful. They're not growing at the rate they were in the late 90s early 2000s, and there'll be a certain amount of displacement in the (primarily consumption based) consumer area, but other than that they'll still be around, also most of these devices will continue to run Windows. (Inertia is a bitch).
"and PC laptops and desktops are soon to be history."
Given that Microsoft's core market is selling to places where people have to do work on their computers, what do you propose is going to replace these laptops and desktops?
Do you believe that because people are watching YouTube at home on Android tablets and iPads instead of laptops it means that they'll soon be going into work to do their job on the same kind of casual-use devices?
@Kristian
exactly. I have a dual 24" monitor set-up at work. 99% of my work involves me sitting at a desk. I wouldn't swap my PC with expanded desktop for a "post-PC" portable device. If I did, I would probably spend 99% of my time using RDP to get on a terminal server somewhere so I could work, less productively because I can't see as much information.
There are some verticals which do benefit from post-PC devices, we've been selling touch terminals and robust tablets to the slaughter and food processing industry for over a decade but the office workers at those places still use a full-on PC to do their work.
Likewise, iPads are being used by one customer to make their salesforce more flexible, it is linked through a custom sales app to their SAP backend. But it is still too fiddly for when they are in the office, then it is quicker and easier to type up notes on dozens of appointments on their PC. In the field, at the customer and taking orders or showing off new products, the iPad really pays for itself.
The problem with maintaining the Windows business is that it is based on selling an OS that is so bad that people will willingly pay for a new version that claims to improve on the old. I have personally purchased numerous DOS/Win upgrades for this reason, before moving to Linux.
Compared to its predecessors, XP SP3 was good enough that people had less interest in upgrading. W8 with its not-Windows interface really killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Microsoft now has to get out of the OS businerss to survive.
The iPhone has a small share of the overall mobile market (about 10%) but is more profitable than the rest of the mobile market combined.
I think it would be better compared with Windows Phone, which has a small share and loses money, since Microsoft has never turned a profit on Bing.
Just ONE. Can't do it can you? I can, however, make a list of their failures and money pits...lets see:
Xbox (never profitable, any generation)
Zune
Kin
WebTV
UltimateTV
Surface (RT or Pro)
Windows Phone
I could go on, but you get the picture. MS has been trying for YEARS to be successful in the consumer electronics space, but all they have done is flush BILLIONS of dollars down the drain! This latest attempt, to put "Windows Everywhere" is hugely misguided. I, and millions of other users, LOATHE Windows..ESPECIALLY Windows 8! We neither want, nor need Windows infecting our other devices. There are already superior platforms for phones, tablets, and even desktop computers...people use Windows, not because they love it, but because of simple inertia. Now that they have to basically relearn how to use the new OS, many people, myself included, have decided to move on to alternative platforms and avoid MS completely.
As for Xbox? WHY would ANYONE want to pay the same price as the competing PS4 for a console that isn't as powerful and that runs at lower resolutions and/or frame rates? Halo? PLEASE. The Xbox (D)One was a failure the moment they announced the specs...and no amount of "cloud computing" secret sauce, DX12 magic fairy dust or other software optimizations is going to fix the inherent problem of them using an underpowered GPU and slower memory! It's over, they lost.
"Xbox (never profitable, any generation)"
Actually the Xbox 360 is a few billion in profit and still making money. Offset to a degree by the costs of the original Xbox.
It's also looking a near certainty that Microsoft are going to make significant ongoing profits with Xbox One once the launch costs are eaten....