This analysis seems right to me. MSFT's annual cash flow from operations is in the $24 billion+ range. MSFT has $44 billion of cash in the bank. What is MSFT going to do with all that cash? Watch Google slowly eat its business? I'm surprised MSFT hasn't invested more in web services -- $2 billion seems small given its resources. Could it be a shortage of opportunities?
The $2b is what they spent IN EXCESS of the value they currently carry on the books for the business - they invested far more.
It's an abysmal performance by anyone's standard BUT they could probably sell that business for considerably more than the book value.
Even if the book value is fair and they lost $2b, they got the only viable (albeit still money-losing) alternative to Google, which was a strategic imperative if they want to link Office and Windows to the cloud.
