Re: I've come to the conclusion
That Google make money from X% of search, and then implying that Microsoft must make similar money from their (admittedly growing, but by dubious monopolistic tactics again such as forcing Cortana search with Bing on Windows 10) percentage doesn't necessarily follow. They could just be trying to run a loss-leader, without actually monetary values to hand.
And Google don't make much from search as such, in fact they PAY people like Firefox to be default search. They make much more from ads, and AdWords almost has no parallel whatsoever, certainly not from the Microsoft camp. I don't believe for a second that MS make as much from ads as Google do, certainly not if you have to have gone through Bing to see most of those ads.
Isn't the most profitable business of Microsoft still Office? And cutting Windows from (in my day) several hundred pounds a seat to zero seems like they never looked into the middle ground of having it on Windows subscriptions for personal use like the Office people did. You're not trying to tell me that Bing and ads makes enough money that Windows is literally nothing more than a free Bing interface nowadays?
I don't buy it, sorry. Search isn't big money. You can't pay Google to get to the top of the listings. In fact, it's doubtful you can pay anyone to get to the top of the Google listings. What you can do is buy Google Ads and Adwords that are on MILLIONS of websites - including, for a while, things like Hotmail and Yahoo. That's where Google makes its money. Even Apple make nothing from search (except possibly a payment FROM Google to default to Google for search!) or ads, and they make the most "profit" in terms of percentage of them all.
Windows is honestly not that unprofitable (yet easy to maintain), and search not that profitable that your choice of search engine can give you an entire OS for free. And MS aren't even making it back on ads, applications or even server-side or cloud sales.
It has much more to do with trying to stay relevant, I feel. Office for Android, SQL Server on Linux, forcibly giving away an OS. it smells more of "How can we get a slice of the action again?" than anything to do with owning a search market that generates only a pittance.
Seriously, they are giving away Windows on less than a tenth of ad revenue that Google enjoy?:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Microsoft-Surpass-Yahoo-Global-Digital-Ad-Market-Share-This-Year/1011012
I don't believe it for a second.