Stephen Elop Would Kill Bing, Sell Xbox if CEO of Microsoft

[Hydrotricithline]

You would think that even if the new CEO candidate was looking to possibly sell off Xbox from Microsoft that they would 'postpone' the stance until... well lets say after the Xbox One launch

However unlike 95% of the posts here I do strongly agree with getting rid of bing. Yahoo and Bing.. nice try. Google won man.. Get out of the search engine boat, I believe microsoft needs to refocus their efforts on operating systems and integrated packages (such as office). Where as most of the people here seem to be speaking of free cloud based alternatives to the MS office suite. They need to innovate and give people a viable reason to upgrade to new versions and not go with free alternatives; check Adobe and it's business model. They're continually innovating and adding new features, some work.. some don't; and expand on the ideas that do work. Windows 8 in my opinion is a massive massive failure. MS has just been resting on its laurels that people will just buy Microsoft OS's and (thankfully) the market proved them wrong. As with selling office suite as a business plan, the greater part of revenue for MS is the corporate markets, however as with apple (post jobs departure) Microsoft has ceased to innovate, only try to fix ideas they created a decade (or 2 in the case of Active Directory). Innovation seems to be gone, and there are plenty of clones out there. If MS doesn't do something with it's R&D and actually innovate products and market them to demographics that actually exist, they're pretty hooped.

Long of the short; we're no longer in the anti-trust days of Microsoft, get back to innovation; and keep it american. Selling out to China with production of consoles (which pretty much all consoles already have) and fixing decade old ideas needs to change.

 

[SteelCity1981]

investors are what drives a company and if that latest report is true about shares sky rocketing to it's highest level since the mid 2000's because of those comments about selling or killing bing and Xbox then expect that to happen if Elop becomes CEO of Microsoft and that comment and how the investors Microsoft. I do agree that Microsoft should sell or kill Bing. I still don't know of anyone that uses Bing over Google and as for the Xbox I would love to see it being sold to Sega and see them get back in the console industry.

 

[Avus]

"Elop will supposedly become head of a new Microsoft devices unit that controls the Surface tablets and Xbox gaming consoles."

This guy suppose be the head of Xbox and he want to sell Xbox division if he is CEO. This guy must hated his assigned job...

Selling Bing is kind of make sense. It will take long time and $$ to beat Google. But for Xbox, it is either be the first or very close 2nd best console system in the world. And it makes LOTS of $$$. Giving up this will be a big mistake. He said he rather concentrate the sales of OFFICE - which is the de facto standard of office application in the whole planet EARTH. How he going to get more sales? expand sales of MS Office to the whole Solar system?? Just from is POV on Xbox and Office, I don't like him as MS CEO.

 

[everygamer]

1. Microsoft needs to continue to invest in in their cloud infrastructure and its features, they are showing promise in this segment of a growing industry.

2. Office is slowing moving to the free segment, at least to the general public, businesses will likely continue to pay for full office to make use of the more extensive features that most consumer or small businesses wont need with a paid product.

3. They need to re-focus on their platforms, the OS becomes a key driving force for development tools, core infrastructure products for businesses, etc. Apple might be dominating the retail market, but they are distant memory in enterprise infrastructure (servers, network). Linux took a bite out of Microsoft here, but more in standalone infrastructure, Active Directory and how it ties Server, File Services, Web Services, Database Services, etc along with Authentication has few counterparts in the market.

4. They need someone to re-think their retail/consumer strategy. They are trying to become Apple, but they shouldn't. They should lease the Surface patents to other manufacturers and then let the entire PC industry come out with hybrids with nifty click on keyboard case covers in all different sizes and price points and they should give Windows 8 away for free (or near to free) to do it. So long as the Windows ecosystem is the biggest in the world, it will drive their server & infrastructure business as well as keep Office as the king of the productivity hill. At the end of the day, in the retail/consumer market, content delivery is what makes money, games, music, video, apps, etc. The platform is just a means to an end. Apple figured this out with iTunes, its what has made the iPod, iPhone and iPad successful, without content delivery all of those devices would have just been hardware with nifty features but no meat. Microsoft should just partner with Amazon, between the two you would have the biggest platform combined with the largest content library .. market changer.

 

[back_by_demand]

So what if Bing is losing money, Amazon ran at a vast loss for years before becoming the defacto online shop. Bing will gain traction with the combined ecosystem of MS, to surrender the search market to Google will end competition and that is bad for the consumer. Plus, you can't sell Bing, if Microsoft can't make it work with their integrated ecosystem then who else has the financial and technical muscle to make it work better? Nobody, MS needs balls of steel and back Bing to the hilt, if Elop intends to drop Bing that should effectively end his CEO aspirations

 

[amb7247]

I don't like this. This will destroy Microsoft. Bing is turning to be successful on many platforms and many people use being compared to the information google has and some info is better. The integration of windows 8, xbox, surface tablets and windows phones would be severely and badly fragmented. Not to mention if xbox is no longer part of microsoft, they'll also loose a big source of revenue. Instead of hiring this guy, hire someone that will change and innovate to make your current products better. Be more customer oriented and make changes for the customer, not in the interest of the company. I already do not like this guy, and I hope investors will also see this.

 

[JD88]

"Elop will supposedly become head of a new Microsoft devices unit that controls the Surface tablets and Xbox gaming consoles."

This guy suppose be the head of Xbox and he want to sell Xbox division if he is CEO. This guy must hated his assigned job...

Selling Bing is kind of make sense. It will take long time and $$ to beat Google. But for Xbox, it is either be the first or very close 2nd best console system in the world. And it makes LOTS of $$$. Giving up this will be a big mistake. He said he rather concentrate the sales of OFFICE - which is the de facto standard of office application in the whole planet EARTH. How he going to get more sales? expand sales of MS Office to the whole Solar system?? Just from is POV on Xbox and Office, I don't like him as MS CEO.

Actually Microsoft loses about 2 billion a year on Xbox. The question being asked is: For what purpose?

I agree with you on Office though. Office is pretty much what is keeping MS floating as it is. That and licensing fees from Android lol. I'm not so sure it has much more to give in terms of growth. As a result, Elop's strategy seems to be to maintain the status quo which is a real fast way to die in the tech industry.

For those who don't know, Microsoft gets about 2 billion a year in Android licensing fees which makes up nearly 15% of Microsoft's annual profit. That's what keeps a lot of these side projects floating.

 

[amb7247]

sorry for the repeated posts.

 

[Christopher Shaffer]

So this guy doomed Nokia and then sold it to MS after having worked for MS? Yeah, no insider trading going on there.

If he thinks he's going to run a company who's entire model has moved to creating devices in a world if competition who are doing the same back to a software-only model, and a paid one at that, he's clearly clueless on the tech world.

The whole software industry is shifting to a "free-to-play" model. Selling Office isn't going to cut it in the world of Open Office, MS's own Office365 and Google Docs.

Hardware sales + SaaS is the new model; this guy is living in 2000.

 

[GuyOnline]

Gates had a grand vision and Microsoft achieved it and made a humongous amount of money doing it. Gates has moved on to a new vision and Microsoft is left with goal of cranking out $$$ to help fund Bill's charities and continue to reward it long-time investors. There is no exciting new technology challenge for Microsoft and it is just an ordinary mature profitable big-company investment. What market-shifting technology breakthrough is anyone looking for from them, and why?

 

[JOSHSKORN]

It's a shame the XBOX One GPU hardware is nowhere near top notch, not saying the PS4 is, but at least it's much better. They really could've done much better, there. The XBOX One is going to be Microsoft's Little Engine That Could. I hope they don't hold onto it as long as they did with the XBOX 360. The XBOX/Kinect boxes should've been merged into one, as well. Hopefully there's an XBOX TWO that gets it right, sooner than later, with those two items just mentioned being the upgrade. Not sure what else XBOX One brings to the table, but I'll be finding out, myself in a couple weeks. I see myself getting both consoles.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft spins off XBOX. It looks a whole lot like Windows 8 with the tiles. As far as Bing...who uses that, anyway? Google has the crown, there and I don't ever see that changing, unless their (lack of) privacy terms become insanely ridiculous, and the rest of the world catches onto that.

If Microsoft were to capitalize on a search engine, they need to allow privacy up front, and allow its users to opt-into tracking...something Google I think is about to go down, for.

 

[Barantos1]

This guy has the right idea. Seriusly have any of you ued bing? I tried it and it was awful, seems like such a waste of company assets to keep it functional. The xbox is also a disappointment. If anything Microsoft should focus on creating a standard system to make pc's more modular. This would then allow even novice pc users to upgrade their pats and system on a regular basis. They could also transition this device into a standard rting system that would allow more clarity on anticipated performance within gaming. It would also reduce the pc>console>pc transition that always occurs in develpoing gaming platforms. Seriously, modular desktops and standard performance ratings are the future of the pc. Developing smooth inerfaced software for these new pc's is where Microsoft could continue to profit.

 

[dgingeri]

I love the new Xbox One interface, with the whole recognition system and voice commands. Even though I don't play console games, I'm thinking of getting an Xbox One just for a TV control system for Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and others. The Skype thing would help me with keeping in touch with family and friends, too. (I know, I could be doing that with my PC already, but I just don't have a web cam for it. I just like the integration of Skype with voice commands.) It reminds me a lot of the Star Trek TNG computer interface, which I have been wanting for decades. I'm hoping to see more of this with new versions of Windows. I do hope they keep the Xbox division around.

They can discard Bing for all I care. It's kind of annoying.

 

[sobank]

First of all Microsoft needs to fire people and not hire........yet. First one to go will be the dude who decided that offering their phone exclusively tied to one cell phone company was good idea. The result......... I am in toronto and want to buy a nokia 1020. I can not. Because Nokia is being offered by only one company. So either I change my service or buy different phone. And obviously I am not gonna dump my extremely cheap plan for a phone. Way to go microsoft marketing. This is certainly the best way to get your phone sold to mases and have your phone OS be seen.

Secondly, the man who decided nokia should have fixed battery and no memory expansion.

Thanks for doing that. android users hated iphone only for its OS and not those two reasons.

after firing people above.........go ahead. hire a new one.

 

[coolitic]

Microsoft was good with Bill Gates. It sucks terribly now.
Killing bing is a good idea, but selling xbox? the most successful rip-off in the world?
Even though the Xbox One is bad, they will still make lots of cash especially with xbox fanboys.

My 2 favorite companies and their head are: Microsoft with Bill Gates, and Valve with Gabe Newell.

 

[pjmelect]

Microsoft needs to get rid of the Metro interface and develop a desktop version of the Windows operating system for businesses and professional users. It would sell like hot cakes.

 

[f-14]

Kevin Parrish might want to remove this story before Elops lawyers get ahold of it, this is the kind of press that causes lawsuits

"However sources claim that Elop believes..."
"Sources point out that while at Nokia, Elop cut 40,000 jobs and reduced operating expenses by....."
"Another clue to Elop's thinking, according to sources, stems from....."

Elop : " your honor i never said any of this stuff and the defendant made claims in a wold wide press release that cause me not to get the job &/salary which is why i am suing for $XX million dollars in this defamation lawsuit. "

 

[sean1357]

He should sell Windows Phone division. It's crap phone I have ever seen. Love iPhone 5S so much...

 

[Baldarhion]

Big laughes in sight when google will port his version of openoffice for winphones...

 

[logainofhades]

Does Microsoft really want Stephen Elop as the CEO?

Stephen Elop Would Kill Bing, Sell Xbox if CEO of Microsoft : Read more

More like he would kill Microsoft. This idiot shouldn't run a hot dog stand much less Microsoft.

 

[doomtomb]

Should read "Microsoft would kill Stephen Elop, sell his soul if CEO of Microsoft".

 

[southernshark]

cut research to zero. sell off parts of the company. maximize short teem stock gains and then jump out in the golden parachute. this guy is a sad corporate clown like Hurd. Bing is actually more popular than Google in China because it actually works here ( Google is constantly attacked).

 

[robochump]

If Elop's strategy is to focus on a few products and put all of the proverbial eggs in one basket then it is no wonder his tenure as CEO of Nokia ultimately failed and had to be bought in order to survive.

Even if you hate the XBox, you have to respect that it forced consoles to become more powerful than they would if only Sony and Nintendo were making consoles. Im sure we would still be playing on platforms similar to Wii without added competition!

 

[ttcboy]

Another Jill Wilson on the making..

Bringing down the world's no.1 hand phone maker is still not enough for u ?

What's next ? Make MS shares worthless and sell the company to fruity company ?

 

[BryndonB]

They need someone who'll look at a along term vision of where Microsoft wants to be and help bring that to fruition. As others have commented, this fool will only be interested in short term for the investors and stock price (and his bonus). Their long term vision needs to be having Windows as the default OS on every device. They were going OK at this until the smartphone market took off but they could be doing a lot better at it than they currently are and Elop would just take them backwards.