A buddy and I were drinking months back, and for whatever reason (most likely several beers was the reason) he misinterpreted the Bing and Facebook arrangement

A buddy and I were drinking months back, and for whatever reason (most likely several beers was the reason) he misinterpreted the Bing and Facebook arrangement that was made for "Facebook is buying Bing." Completely un-Microsoft, I can't see it happening but if it did.. Damn that could make things interesting. Bing is interesting, it's a great attempt. The problem is Microsoft, so long as they're running it and setting the "standard" for it, it's going to be a failure. It's not going to knock Google off their perch. It's just not. And anything less than that will be a failure. Cut that team and product free, hand it over to like a facebook? IBM went through some similar stuff, MS should be spinning stuff out, if their current phone effort fails again to live up to their hype, they should just cut that group free too, let them go and be successful. that stuff creates new industries which in turn create new opportunities for everybody, including MS. Let Bing or Bing + FB cultivate an army of guys that want to get rich and can control their own destiny, the output will be far more interesting