I don't know that Bing has "failed" yet, but I highly doubt it'll be anything other than one amongst many in the pack in 5 years.<p>Microsoft has always been good at the pivotal turnaround. Recognizing when a key moment was on the wind, mustering together a tremendous effort, making a good number of smart decisions and putting out a solid anchor product that (re)cements their position in the industry and reinvigorates the brand in doing so. Windows 95 and Windows 7 are perfect examples. IE4 (yes really), Bing, and Windows Phone 7 are also good examples. One of the big problems with Microsoft is that its organization and its culture are extremely tied to the traditional 3-ish year ship cycle. A hugely successful diving catch every other ship cycle or so is rapidly becoming less and less feasible as a means to hang on to or acquire a market. Microsoft does not seem to get the web at a fundamental level, it doesn't seem to have the capacity to release software at a pace of yearly, monthly, or continuously.<p>And that will ultimately be the undoing of Bing and the Windows Phone. The only way MS knows how to crank out releases faster is the deathmarch, and that is a certain route to doom.<p>Worse yet, since Gates left MS has no real technical or managerial leadership, it's bureaucracy all the way up and down. This has been affecting the culture at Microsoft little by little, also partly coupled to the stock price having plateaued. More and more talented devs are finding that MS lacks the excitement and the reward of cutting edge development, so they are moving elsewhere. Also, without that talent around fewer good projects are pushed forward, fewer projects succeed, people become less satisfied with their jobs, etc. (think about the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" only translate the bad stuff, on a corporate level, to hundreds and then thousands of George Bailey's going away). This makes the environment that much less rewarding for everyone else who remains, so yet more people leave. And slowly but surely the creep of a more rigid and bureaucratic corporate culture and organization fills in the gaps left by the people who had the most clout in the company, causing yet more and more talent to evaporate away.<p>It's a self-reinforcing cycle that will lead to the rapid diminution of the company and its prospects over time and the examples the article provides of the process as it happened at Bing have played out throughout the company. Nobody young with high prospects seriously considers Microsoft as a destination anymore, and increasingly the older devs are either retiring on their massive earnings from the glory days or they're just looking for somewhere else to be that's a better use of their time and talent.<p>MS continues to make a crap-ton of money from its core products, but it will be institutionally ham-strung in responding to the threats that will steal away that revenue (such as mobile-heritage operating systems). Because those threats will grow at a rate MS is incapable of competing with.