Bing has long occupied a place in Microsoft's gallery of boneheaded products with the Zune music player, Clippy and the little-remembered Kin smartphone. Microsoft spent billions of dollars of shareholder money in a quixotic attempt to build a web-and-search empire that could compete with Google. Even the name Bing is worthy of ridicule.Bing is still no Google. But without much notice on Wall Street or beyond, Microsoft has turned into a quiet giant in digital advertising.Bing is on track to generate roughly $5.3 billion in revenue for Microsoft's fiscal year ended June 30, based on the pace of sales during the previous nine months. Here's some context: Web search and advertising are among Microsoft's lowest-priority businesses, yet Bing's revenue is more than Yahoo's sales over the last 12 months, and two-and-a-half times Twitter's advertising revenue. Bing's yearly revenue may top what Microsoft makes from selling Windows PCs to consumers, based on some rough 2015 disclosures.Revenue is also growing nicely. Bing's 43 percent growth in search advertising revenue in the nine months ended March 31 is not far off YouTube's 50 percent growth rate, UBS estimates. Microsoft has also managed to turn Bing from a money pit that in some years posted billions of dollars in operating losses into a business that Microsoft says is profitable.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-07-19/microsoft-turns-bing-from-a-joke-into-an-ad-business#footnote-1468946790877-ref