There have been few bigger money pits for Microsoft over the last several years than its attempts to compete with Google in the online search realm through Bing. Although Bing’s search market share has slowly been eating away at the market shares of smaller search engines, it still hasn’t put a dent in Google’s dominant share of the search market. What’s more, maintaining Bing has been extremely expensive for Microsoft and its Online Services Division has lost around $11 billion since 2005.
Despite all this, Microsoft is apparently refusing to give up on its search engine. AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher says that all of Microsoft’s board members, including recently appointed activist shareholder firm ValueAct, think that Bing is critical to the company’s future in online revenues. This doesn’t mean that Microsoft will hold onto all its online properties, however, as Swisher thinks that its MSN news portal could be sold off in the future to help the company cut down on its losses from online services.
