Microsoft Reportedly Tried to Build an Amazon-Killer
 

Once upon a time, Microsoft had a dream. A beautiful dream of competing with and overtaking Amazon and eBay but then as with all dreams, Microsoft had to wake up and face the reality. The company put together Project Brazil to do just that, but decided recently to scrap the entire effort. The software giant held discussions with retailers and technology companies about a marketplace, proposing to equip it with an array of merchants, as well as a unified shopping cart and broad shipping options, according to these people. To lure shoppers, Microsoft was considering subsidizing the price of goods on its e-commerce service using a portion of advertising dollars merchants spend on Microsoft's Bing Web-search engine or elsewhere.

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