Microsoft: Bing's Loss Making Days Are Over, Time To Reap The Benefits

Microsoft was under constant criticisms from various people on the financial performance of Bing. The Online Services Division at Microsoft started losing money in the past 4-5 years. In the last year, Microsoft lost about $1.5 billion in Bing and its services. But, Microsoft is committed to Bing and in the recent financial analyst meeting Dave O’Hara, the Chief Financial Officer for Microsoft’s Applications and Services Group confirmed that Bing is about to make money soon. He hinted that the investment days are over and its time to reap the benefits out of it.

Starting about six years ago, O’Hara said, Microsoft began making substantial investments in building out its datacenters, infrastructure and in writing its underlying search algorithm. Those investments were reflected in constant operating losses reported by Microsoft’s Online Services Division.

But now Microsoft has built the foundation required for Bing. Infrastructure investments for it will now be “incremental,” O’Hara said, as Microsoft now has adquate capacity to run and maintain its search service. Microsoft will continue to make substantial investments in building out Office 365’s and Windows Azure datacenter backends now, he said.

O’Hara noted that under Microsoft’s new reporting structure, the company isn’t breaking out its Online Services profits and losses. (Online Services was comprised of Bing, MSN and online advertising in the old reporting structure.) In some ways, he said he wished Microsoft still did because the company is now “on course or ahead of course” at breaking even

Also he revealed Microsoft’s plan to make Bing to play “bigger and more visible role than in the past” on devices. Read more from the link below.
Source: ZDNET