Bing Lost $5.5 Billion So Far

Sites include Bing.com . Published on September 30th, 2011. Written by Anthony West.

It’s very hard to admit failure, especially when that failure will make you look like an utter fool before your competitors. This is the dilemma facing Microsoft, and the object of its failure is Bing. The search engine was supposed to be the ‘answer’ to Google, but even with a name change and a partnership with Yahoo, the search engine continues to struggle—very badly.

What makes the situation for Microsoft precarious is the fact that Bing is losing money–$5.5 billion so far. The search engine got its independent branding in 2009, having previously been a part of Microsoft online division. Since then the search engine has struggled to become a household name and according to some sources, Bing is running a quarterly loss of over $1 billion.

So what is a struggling search engine to do? The answer is not very clear, and the biggest reason for that is Google. When Microsoft announced the partnership with Yahoo, it was expected that both would form a ‘search colossus’. But nothing of the sort happened and Google lost only 0.02% of its overall market share since the inception of the Yahoo/Bing partnership. It’s obvious then that unless Google stumbles heavily, Bing will continue to struggle as a search engine. And short of some corporate sabotage, I can’t see Google losing dominance so quickly.

For now Microsoft will just have to find a way to plug hole; $5.5 billion is a lot of money and although Microsoft is worth a lot more than that, it can do with funnelling those funds somewhere else.

Do you think Microsoft should kill off Bing to save money? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.