I assume most of the team did not see this coming as they were actively hiring. Live Labs culture did not fit in well with the rest of the company and their pr

I assume most of the team did not see this coming as they were actively hiring. Live Labs culture did not fit in well with the rest of the company and their priorities did not align well with their parent division. The departure of Gary was just the nail in the coffin. I believe the closure is a result of them becoming a big enough expense that division leadership started paying attention and there was not a well defined strategy to drive query share. There are plenty of little teams that operate under the radar quite effectively. Their primary failure was not being able to measure their positive impact on Bing query share.