Great interview, great for Microsoft, great for the search industry and most importantly great for the general public.

...and quite nice for telly too.  We're all happy.

Welcome and good luck to our lovely new TV customer, Bing!

I've picked a number of keywords out of this interview. Words like "monetise consumers", users have "too much information" (I guess you mean choice as in "other than Microsoft"?) "give advertisers a return on investment" just for starters.

So the conclusion I would draw from this is that Microsoft want to remove any results that don't actually provide some return for Microsoft.

So, basically, Microsoft knows its milking days for the desktop are drawing to a close, so it wants to gear itself up to milk people online and in the Cloud. Too cynical a view?

So why is Ciao!, Microsoft's OWN shopping portal the first thing Microsoft built into Bing?

Let's face it guys, Google's about making money through consumer choice, Microsoft's about making money, period and choice risks the consumer going elsewhere and we don't want that, do we?

Hi Neil

Thanks for the feedback on the interview. What Mel was driving at with his questions were what value Bing can bring to both consumers AND marketers. Through Microsoft adCenter we have thousands of advertisers that connect with consumers on Bing everyday providing highly targeted marketing of products and services that Bing users are searching for.

What Bing aims to do is cut through the clutter that sometimes arises when users search – our research shows that at over 40% of consumers remain dissatisfied with search engine results – and provide them quicker access to relevant results through a richer, more organised and visual experience.

Sometimes these may be organic results and sometimes these may be sponsored listings, but at the end of the day it’s all about relevancy, speed and concise access to information  to complete a task.

It’s certainly not about removing results that don’t generate cash. That’s why we’ve invested in our Webmaster suite of tools www.bing.com/.../webmasters  and why we continue to help businesses realise the power of search engine marketing through our blogs and marketing conferences right across the business.

The cloud plays a huge part in Microsoft’s future and I encourage you to view Steve Ballmer’s speech recently on our plans www.microsoft.com/.../cloud

Whether it’s the desktop, online or in the cloud, we’re producing products in response to specific business and consumer needs.

We believe there is significant innovation still to come across most of the businesses we are in and in particular search.

We need to evolve from providing just links and start providing answers that help searchers make quick and more informed decisions. Bing will do just that.

Regards

Ashley