Microsoft posted a very rare quarterly loss. mostly because of the failure of its Google rival site Bing.  (It’s software business is going gangbusters).  The 492 million dollar loss is mostly because of its online division (which also includes the MSN Web portal, but is mostly Bing).  I think this could be an interesting excuse to look at Bing and why it failed.  Google has made such a massive business out of search and why couldn’t Microsoft take a bite out of it?  MS certainly has the resources to make a serious stab at search, even if Google had a running start.  And search would seem to be a question of getting the algorithms right and not a marketing trick etc.  So why the fail?  What is Google doing that is so hard to replicate