Worries That Microsoft Is Growing Too Tricky to Manage - NYTimes.com

Revisiting the case for "Baby Bills"

"Investors have clamored for Microsoft to get rid of its money-losing or less profitable businesses, seeing them as a drag on the stock price. Richard Sherlund, a longtime Microsoft analyst at Nomura Securities, believes the Xbox video game business and Bing search engine are good candidates for spinoffs.
Mr. Sherlund has speculated that Microsoft could give Facebook, with which Microsoft has an existing partnership, control of Bing, in exchange for a share of revenue from the additional traffic it would drive to Facebook’s site. Mr. Sherlund estimates that Microsoft has accumulated losses of more than $17 billion in the search and online business."

Worries That Microsoft Is Growing Too Tricky to Manage - NYTimes.com