Yeah, Bing and Windows Phone are still going but Bing is losing $3 billion a year, and Windows phone is losing market share despite sales increasing. It's only a matter of time before their plugs are pulled.

Chances are that Bing and Windows Phone will never be pulled. They are there because Microsoft has to be in certain markets, regardless of actual performance, in order to sell its technology stack as fully-featured and comprehensive. In the same way, Xbox will never be pulled.

Microsoft can drop the occasional service, but they rarely run from big platform bets. Most above-mentioned products were small fish or even just websites -- with the exception of Silverlight (but that's because in-browser media plugins as a category have been basically obsoleted across the whole market) and Zune (again, mp3 players have been basically obsoleted), they don't really sit on the same shelf as Office, Windows, Xbox, Windows Phone, Bing, VisualStudio or SQLServer.

I'll disagree on that.

Search and mobile are way too strategic to be dropped. There's no "there" anywhere else for a company as big as Microsoft!

They can lose $3B/yr for a long, long time!

Current funding, recruitment trajectories don't support your claim.

Bing isn't losing money anymore, they're finally breaking even as of last year.

Where did you hear that? This is from June 2014 [0]:

Unfortunately Microsoft does not break out its Bing revenue separately (and a Microsoft spokesperson referred us back to the earnings release when asked) so exactly how much Bing rakes in is anyone's guess, but the company did note Bing managed a 40% ad revenue increase in its recent fourth quarter ended June. CEO Satya Nadella, one-time leader of the division, also noted Bing would reach breakeven within two years.

So Nadella thinks it'll break even in 2016.

0. http://www.thestreet.com/story/12821420/1/microsoft-is-using...