Microsoft has lost $9 billion on Bing
> Stefan Weitz, Microsoft's director of Bing, believes that if Bing can change the way people think about search, sooner or later users will switch over from Google.For that to work people would have to change the way they think about microsoft as well, not how they think about search.Right now there are several ecosystems on the web that you can be part of. There is the 'social' ecosystem which governs you interactions with other people rather than with other services. Facebook, twitter, google+ etc. Then there is 'mobile', which is a gateway to a bunch of data and to information. Then there is your work and the applications you use to do that work. Finally there is search.Search is different from all the others in that you could switch overnight to a new provider, but just like any other good infrastructure component, you probably will not do that if you are satisfied with your current provider. Search is not visible enough to warrant a conscious decision until you are dissatisfied.Changing your thinking on search is one hurdle that is going to be hard to cross without say google going down for a couple of weeks or some major mishap that would make their search results unusable for any period of time. That would give an upstart a better chance at a first shot at retaining the users.Changing the way you think about microsoft is going to be a very hard obstacle to clear as well. Microsoft is synonymous with software that you use on your desktop and with several botched attempts at doing search. Before you try them again you'd have to see google performing worse than the best that microsoft has ever presented in this field.Frankly I'm surprised that they keep sinking money into this, they've clearly failed to establish a profitable beach head, meanwhile google is making money hand over fist in the exact same domain. I'm happy they do, more competition is better but for now google seems to be acing them. Microsoft will have to be very careful that 'search' does not turn in to their Afghanistan.