

Can We Please Stop Pretending That Microsoft's Bing Is Doing Well? - strandev
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-bing-losing-billions-2011-4

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PetrolMan
I've honestly never understood why Microsoft has invested so heavily in the
search business but I also think it's incredibly misguided to suggest that
Apple is Microsoft's biggest competitor at this point.

I might be overgeneralizing but Microsoft's core business is software. Apple's
core business is building platforms for software. The only major overlap is in
the world of operating systems. Microsoft cares very little about hardware and
Apple cares a whole lot.

Microsoft's investment in WP7 makes absolute sense but, again, unlike Apple
they aren't about to start building smartphones.

I'm not sure but somehow the Microsft vs Apple battle just doesn't seem
particularly interesting anymore because they seem to be able to coexist
pretty well. Google is the interesting player because they are taking stabs in
both directions and stepping on everyone's toes. Somewhat reactively, both
companies have tried to push their way into Google's core business. Apple at
least seems to have a plan; Microsoft appears to just be throwing money at the
problem.

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steveb
The numbers are horrible, and Google is growing revenue almost twice as fast
as Bing (27% YoY vs. 14%).

In the last quarter, Google growth in revenue from the same quarter last year
was almost 3X Bing total revenues.

<http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html>
[http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn...](http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY11/Q3/default.aspx)

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willyg
It's such a shame. I think we should Bing more. Their search site is really
good on the iphone

