FSOwner
FS Owner
Steve Ballmer has said that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) will have to “spend to compete” in search—and Thursday he put some round numbers on how much the company might eventually invest. Speaking in Chicago, Ballmer said he was willing to invest 5 to 10 percent of the company’s overall operating income on the search business for up to five years, according to Reuters. Alley Insider runs the math and says that would amount to up to $11 billion—a figure which assumes the unlikely scenario that Microsoft’s operating income will stay flat for the next five years. The amount is more than what Ballmer has indicated in the past. For instance, last summer, he told financial analysts that “we’re going to certainly have to think about the bogey as at least $1.2 billion or $1.5 billion a year to stay competitive, let alone reinvent on the R&D side.”
View Full Article: paidContent.org
