NY Times: Microsoft Tried To Unload Bing On Facebook 230
benfrog writes "According to a blog posting on the New York Times site, Microsoft tried to sell the perpetual money-losing Bing to Facebook 'over a year ago' (the article cites 'several people with knowledge of the discussions who didn't want to be identified talking about internal deliberations'). Steve Ballmer, apparently, was not involved or consulted. Facebook politely declined. Neither Microsoft or Facebook would comment on the rumors."
Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is MS Reverting Back to Its MSN Search Service? (Score:4, Interesting)
Six months ago, I logged from where visitors to some of my Web pages came. I was particularly interested in which search services were crawling my Web site. I am now completing a similar logging.
Six months ago, Bing had completely replaced MSN as a crawler; MSN did not crawl my selected Web pages even once. This time, I am again seeing MSN crawling my Web site.
Does this mean that Micro$oft is reverting back to its prior search service and abandoning Bing?
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who wouldn't want Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure if that is correct to say of Google. They seem to ditch most of their products before they even launch so they have no real idea how profitable they would be.
Isn't that the right time to ditch a product? If you don't think it's going to work out, it seems much better to ditch it before you launch it.
Makes more sense than Instagram (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook is one of the few sites with the resources and hit count to actually have a chance against Google. Not to say it would have worked, the implementation, combined with Bing's ahem "quirks" would make it an uphill battle.
But instead the sage Zuckerberg proved himself to not be the visionary the media paints him by buying a brain-dead obvious "innovative" flavor of the week app (apparently cheap filters and basic image processing + built in camera FTW) with no patents, innovations, or profits. Let me introduce you to the (richer) Shawn Fanning of our decade 2010's.
We used to call ideas like facebook and Napster clever uses of existing technology presented in a way that finally opened the door to normal people. A noble achievement worth a paycheck. Now we call them the basis for Fortune 500 companies and the pinnacle of tech innovations. NASA and real science is just too boring and no matter how many buttons I push my microwave can't make my food come out in sepia.
No offense to the people who work for Instagram the product is fine, just that it's overvalue raises serious concerns about the state of progress. There is not a single thing that is new or better about the product than PC software for decades other than it runs on a pocket computer. imagine telling the people at Bell Labs, Xerox, Honeywell, IBM, or one of the dozens of other real innovators in the 70's that shit like this was what drove our current technology economy. They would laugh, then cry, then ask about the flying cars
Oh but I forgot it runs on a smartphone! Meaning that according to the patent office these are whole new uncharted realms of innovation worthy of the legal protection akin to the lightbulp or the the CRT. Prior art? Now a days whats considred inventive is just shifting and existing idea wholesale from one screen or interface to another. To me in a sane marketplace Instagram is worth about a $1 plus whatever assets and minus whatever debts they have incurred.
Oh well then, off to design my new protected innovation the "Hello Welcome" door-mat based browser. And don't you dare libel it me by suggesting it is in any way similar to PC browsers since Mosaic in the 90's. Can you control your computer browser with your fucking foot? Yeah that's what I thought- invent something as revolutionary and lifechanging as browsing in the the elements from your doorstep 20 feet from your PC and maybe we will talk BTW.
You won't believe what I've got up my sleeve next (assuming you have been in a coma since the death of real R&D focus in the West).
Re:Companies do this all the time (Score:0, Interesting)
Your thesis that "Microsoft thinks long-term and Google doesn't" is a real stretch.
No, because Google kills unprofitable products faster than MS. Google is certainly a more short-term focused company.
Re:The fundamental differnence between companies (Score:5, Interesting)
It was and probably is. And if you took away the iPhones and iPods there's still the iPads where there's more excitement today.
If you actually wanted to 'hurt' Apple you'd take away iTunes. Not because it's a massive profit center in itself but because it's what makes the iPod user buy an iPhone, iPad, Apple TV etc etc.
MS has no gateway drug, they thought they did with Windows (and for a long time that was true) but somehow the world changed and a more frequent refresh of the iPhone line is far more exciting that the tick/tock (bad/good) release of Microsofts OS line.