Does Microsoft like to waste money?

[mamamia88]

first they throw money away on 1 failing search engine msn and now they release bing? google is dominating the market why are they bothering?

[LowSky]

why bother, really? The search engine business is still very economically viable, even being in 5th place makes boatloads of money.

So what if Google is #1, years ago it was yahoo, and before that Altavista, and before that webcrawler. Sooner or later the throne will have a new king.

[mamamia88]

so they actually make money on it?

[LowSky]

well maybe not initially but yes in the long run.

Even google didn't make money right out of the gate. I remember back in early days of the company I had never heard of them until a friend of mine from RIT mentioned the site. they got flak for not allowing ads on the webpage, many people didn't think the model would work for business

internet search engines are just like TV networks. a good deal of upfront costs that hopefully pay for themselves by advertisers. The case for Bing is being heavily promoted on Hulu.com and by MSN.

[pwnst*r]

first they throw money away on 1 failing search engine msn and now they release bing? google is dominating the market why are they bothering?

yeah they love wasting money on the millions in donations too.

[The Toxic Mite]

I think you'll find that M$ are actually "money fascists" in this case

:/

[NFblaze]

pwnstar seems like a microsoft rake.

Anyhow, Bing is actually not bad for myself, you can take a blind-search test between 3 engines Yahoo, Bing, and Google here http://blindsearch.fejus.com/.

I only did a couple and it came out Google, Bing, Yahoo

And even if it doesnt succeed, it is definitely a huge improvement over Live.

[PirateChef]

Microsoft can afford to waste money. They're taking the long view: if they keep hacking away at Google's market share, eventually they can win. If they just give up, there's another market they've lost.

Starbucks and Wal-Mart will open too many stores in one area. They know these extra stores won't turn a profit, and will eventually be shut down, but they figure it's worth it if it forces the competition out of town. It's like chess: you sacrifice some resources in order to win the bigger game.

Of course, like every corporation, Microsoft wants to make money. But they also want to own and control every aspect of computing.

[pwnst*r]

pwnstar seems like a microsoft rake.

Anyhow, Bing is actually not bad for myself, you can take a blind-search test between 3 engines Yahoo, Bing, and Google here http://blindsearch.fejus.com/.

I only did a couple and it came out Google, Bing, Yahoo

And even if it doesnt succeed, it is definitely a huge improvement over Live.

a rake? wth does that mean?

[Tibuda]

a rake? wth does that mean?

A make with Ruby syntax (http://rake.rubyforge.org/).

[pwnst*r]

A make with Ruby syntax (http://rake.rubyforge.org/).

http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/images/JamminHenry.jpg

[forrestcupp]

so they actually make money on it?

They make a ton of money on it through advertising. They also have a system where you can buy things through their site at a supposedly discounted rate. They, of course, get a cut, which means that most of the time it's not going to be the lowest price on the web.

Microsoft may do a lot of stupid things, but they never waste money.

[0per4t0r]

They waste money making IE. That is definitely for sure.

[PirateChef]

Microsoft may do a lot of stupid things, but they never waste money.

Like I said, if you look at it from Microsoft's viewpoint, wasting money sometimes makes perfect sense. It's not stupid if you take the long view. MS wants to control everything on your desktop, so if wasting some money helps them get to that goal, it's worth it.

[Sand & Mercury]

Well, they do have a lot of money to waste. If Bing actually takes off in any capacity it won't be a waste of money. It seems much more likely to succeed than Live Search was, mostly on account that Bing does not appear to be crap.