• The New York Times, Monday, August 1, 2011 11:40 AM

Following suggestions that Microsoft might be better off selling Bing, The New York Times takes a closer look at the search engine. "Microsoft's assault on Google in Internet search and search advertising may be the steepest competitive challenge in business today," the paper writes. "It is certainly among the most costly." Indeed, trying to take on Google costs Microsoft upward of $5 billion a year, writes NYT, citing estimates from industry executives and analysts.

Since its debut two years ago, Bing has steadily picked up traffic, accounting for more than 14% of searches (30%, including the searches Microsoft handles for Yahoo) in the American market, according to comScore "Yet those gains have not come at the expense of Google," NYT notes. Its two-thirds share of the market in the United States has remained unchanged in the last two years.

Amid mounting losses, "investors are growing restless at the cost of its search campaign." As Qi Lu, president of Microsoft's online services division, says: "To break through, we have to change the game. But this is a long-term journey." Like any war, the question is whether Microsoft will have enough time to win before investors run out of patience.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »