In two years, Microsoft’s Bing has doubled its share of the U.S. search market, from 7.2 percent to 14.4 percent. If you add Yahoo’s Bing-powered portal, it’s 27 percent. So why are loud voices clamoring for Microsoft to give up on search?

Bing’s Online Services Division doesn’t make money. Shortly after Microsoft released its quarterly earnings results, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan called the OSD an “online sinkhole,” noting that the division last turned a profit in 2006 and had lost $8.5 billion over nine years. Last year, it lost a record $2.56 billion.

Reuters columnist Robert Cyran’s “Microsoft ought to kick off search for Bing buyer” turned up the heat, particularly when it was syndicated the following week in the New York Times under the headline “Bing Becomes A Costly Distraction for Microsoft.” Cyran’s argument is sophisticated: it recognizes the value that Microsoft has built up in Bing (and corresponding value to a buyer like Facebook or Apple). Still, Cyran thinks Microsoft’s continued investment in an unprofitable division doesn’t serve the company’s shareholders. Facebook’s investors — a group that includes Microsoft — would presumably be better suited for the long play that Bing represents than Microsoft’s quasi-blue-chip, profit-maximizing, dividend-minded shareholders.

It’s hard to see another big tech company paying full value. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber joked that Microsoft could make money just by charging “pay-per-view admission to listen live to the phone call as Steve Ballmer calls Steve Jobs and pitches him on Apple buying Bing.”

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler took the proposition more seriously, writing on his personal blog that “Bing needs its Halo” — the hit game that put Microsoft’s Xbox on the map. “Microsoft spends a shit ton of money on Bing — mostly on marketing it,” Siegler writes. “But I don’t know a person who actually uses it. That includes people who work at Microsoft.”

Bing’s supporters quickly rallied. Doc Searls argues that Bing could flank Google by charging subscription fees for personalized, ad-free services. Nick Eaton argues that the short-term profit boost from selling Bing wouldn’t move the share price much anyway. Preston Gralla rightly notes that Bing’s division is filled with groups that bring in hardly any revenue at all, skewing the figures. (Among other things, the Online Services Division builds the data centers that power Azure and the company’s other cloud and cloud-based products.)

Finally, Mary Jo Foley herself, the dean of Microsoft reporters, weighed in with the authoritative “Why Microsoft Won’t Dump Bing.” Yes, the division is losing money, and some of its marketing schemes don’t make much sense, Foley admits. Nevertheless, Bing has become fully integrated into every Microsoft platform, from Windows Phone 7 to streaming video and live TV on the Xbox, and likely even Windows 8 itself.

Microsoft couldn’t untangle itself from Bing if it wanted to. It’s not just sunk cost, but sunk strategy. But it’s a strategy that still may pay off.

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Mobile is the obvious battleground here. The industry is still sorting out exactly how search should work in a small-screen form factor and on the move. Nobody’s figured out how to create mobile advertisement that works.

Android’s smartphone lead gives Google the mobile advantage, but between Windows Phone and potential partnerships with Apple (Google’s former buddy, now frenemy) and struggling-but-still-mighty RIM, Bing could offset that. However, they can only do that if they’re innovating — which means investing. (It means better ideas and implementation, too.)

An even bigger opportunity and investment is global search, where Google is much less overpowering. Microsoft’s new partnership to provide English-language results for Chinese search giant Baidu is just one step towards a real strategy for China, where Google is on the outs with the local government.

Elsewhere in Asia, India’s search market is wide open, in multiple languages. It’s also no accident that Microsoft’s new “Mango” Windows Phone 7.5, just finalized and released to manufacturers, supports 17 new languages and will first appear on new handsets in Japan this fall.

This whole argument turns out to perfectly illustrate my theory that there’s an uneasy but powerful alliance between “Mighty Microsoft,” “New Microsoft,” and “Secret Microsoft”:

• If you can’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t stick with its bread-and-butter divisions like Windows and Office, you’re only thinking in terms of “Mighty Microsoft.”
• If you see Bing as a key part of a post-PC future led by media integration with Xbox, smartphone handsets, and tablets with touchscreen skins, you’re all aboard with “New Microsoft.”
• If you’re hip to the costs and upsides of Azure and the gigantic foreign markets where Microsoft might have to throw some elbows, buy into some partnerships and even get a little censorious to get things done, you’ve grasped the power of “Secret Microsoft.”

Factor in Windows Phone’s partnership with Nokia, still the biggest phonemaker in the world, and you have a chance to make Bing the global mobile winner.

Thinking local battles are the only ones that matter is always a mistake. Apple proved this recently with iPhone; its millions of new Verizon handsets in the US barely made a dent in its total sales, but wider global availability created what Horace Dedlu calls iPhone’s “big bang.”

MG Siegler may not know anyone who uses Bing, but there are billions of people across the world that he’ll never know.