Bing Loses Nearly $1B per Quarter for Microsoft

Bing may never turn a profit

Microsoft has been trying to compete in the search market with its Bing engine and hasn't been doing well. Google is still the runaway king of search and Microsoft is showing little signs of offering up meaningful competition.

Microsoft is taking a beating with Bing, and CNN reports that the search engine is losing Microsoft almost a billion dollars per quarter. Since Bing launched in the summer of 2009, Microsoft has lost $5.5 billion on the service and the losses are flowing faster than ever today.
Not all of the losses can be blamed on Bing though. Apparently, Microsoft has never made money on its search offerings. Since it embarked into search arena, the total mount thrown away amounts to $9 billion.

Bing has 14.7% of the search market and is proud to proclaim it is gaining on Google and has taken share from the search giant. CNN, however, points out that the gain Bing has made in the search market is in fact not coming from Google, but third place Yahoo. Since Bing launched, Google has lost market share slightly from 65% at Bing's debut to 64.8% today.

Half of the gains Bing has made came from Yahoo according to CNN and the rest of the gains came from Ask.com and AOL.
Microsoft is looking to build its market share with partnerships for search with Facebook and with Nokia. Microsoft and Nokia are tying up for a big push into the smartphone market with Nokia being a premiere Windows Phone 7 partner.