“We are deeply committed on search,” Microsoft explains

Jul 2, 2015 04:54 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is pretty much the only company that still hopes to dethrone Google and become an important player in the search industry, and as far as the latter goal is concerned, Redmond has already achieved that more or less.

Bing is currently the second most-used search engine in the world, with a share of approximately 20 percent, according to some third-party statistics, while Google is obviously number one with 65 percent.

There were some voices, however, that recommended Microsoft to step out of the search business and focus on what it does the best, including software development, pointing out that Bing has no chance to defeat Google.

We won’t give up on search

But in a statement today, Rik van der Kooi, VP of Microsoft’s ad business, explains that the software giant is deeply committed on the search business and Bing has become a multibillion dollar business, which makes it very clear that investments in this industry need to continue.

“We are deeply committed on the search side. We see it as a business that we’ve built out over the past six years as sustainable and standalone,” he is quoted as saying by MarketingLand. “It’s a multibillion dollar business, and it does pay for itself right now,” he reconfirms. “Our commitment to Bing is very deep and therefor critical for us to continue to monetize that business”

Indeed, Bing has evolved from just a search engine to a stand-alone platform, powering the search capabilities not only of the main web-based services but also in Windows, Windows Phone, and other products in Microsoft’s lineup.

Moreover, Bing is the core service behind Cortana, Redmond’s personal assistant, but also Siri, Apple’s very own, thus expanding beyond the traditional search business and taking over services that are available on non-Microsoft platforms.