Are Microsoft about to axe Bing entirely?

That’s what’s being reported by Bloomberg. The former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who has been tipped to take the CEO hot-seat at Microsoft in the near future, could be prepared to remove Bing from the search engine war all together. If that’s not enough to surprise you, Bloomberg also claim that the highly successful Xbox business could be under threat from Elop’s proposed ‘focus’ policy.

Whilst Bloomberg claim this information has come from people with ‘knowledge of this thinking’ and the report probably can’t be relied upon as accurate news just yet, the concept behind the report holds some potentially financial value for Microsoft.

The sales of both Bing and Xbox would see Microsoft’s 2015 earnings skyrocket by as much as 40% to start with, whilst Bing has proven to be an extremely costly project for Microsoft. The search engine has made little impact against Google’s behemoth of a business, losing out on a regular basis with regards to search market sharing.

However, the question must be asked. Would Microsoft ever sacrifice their only source of data, regardless of the potential financial growth, and witness Google and Apple take to the field as the only two major search engine businesses?

If Microsoft is planning on staying toe-to-toe with their rivals, they will need Bing to continue providing data for their users whilst search engines continue to be further integrated with newer technology.

On the other hand, Bing has managed to build some extremely useful partnerships with social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with Twitter’s partnership recently being renewed.

If Bloomberg’s report can be trusted and Elop is seriously considering a sharpening of focus for Microsoft, what could it possibly mean for the future of the war for search market shares and what effect could Bing’s exclusion have on the world of search engines in general?

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