Paul Allen’s Stake Manager Believes Microsoft Would Do Better Without Bing

Bing and Xbox are two Microsoft products that take up a substantial amount of resources at the company, both in terms of personnel and finances. And unsurprisingly, both are on the hit list of a certain type of investors.

You know, the ones that want to maximize profits right and now, at any and all costs.

And while Redmond is currently going through a major reorganization process — one that is supposed to enhance the focus on the devices and services concept — some actually believe that even more dramatic changes are actually required.

Paul Ghaffari, the chief investment officer of Vulcan Capital opines that Microsoft would do a lot better without some of its products, namely the search and entertainment divisions, Bing and Xbox.

This, by the way, is the same company that manages the stake of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Talking to the Financial Times in an interview, Ghaffari explained that this way Redmond would have more resources to focus on its core products, like software and cloud:

“The search business and even Xbox, which has been a very successful product, are detracting from that. We would want them to focus on their best competencies. My view is there are some parts of that operation they should probably spin out, get rid of, to focus on the enterprise and focus on the cloud.”

And that’s not all. He also believes that Microsoft needs two CEOs in order to better organize the internal divisions. Alan Mulally of Ford should work alongside another chief executive that has a complete knowhow of the technology market.

This is not the first time these suggestions have been brought up, of course.

A few experts have recommended such moves in the past, with Bing and Xbox being of particular note in this regard. Several analysts have suggested that Microsoft should either discontinue or sell off a few products. The company, for its part, is staying put, it seems.

But the pressure is there, no matter how small.