Steven Elop, one of the few potential CEO candidates for Microsoft, has some ideas to improve Microsoft’s bottom line. First, he would spin off or kill the Bing search engine and the Xbox product line. This is combination with increasing the footprint of their popular Office application, bringing it to iOS and Android in a more full featured package.

Killing off the Xbox and Bing lines would allow Microsoft to focus back on it’s core software packages – Office and Windows, both consumer and enterprise variants.

Agree? Disagree? I can see his point, and it’s very valid. I just think that the Xbox platform is a major part of Microsoft now. Bing, although I love it and prefer it to Google, isn’t as strong as a brand as the Xbox is. Spinning it off to a different company would probably give some benefit.

Elop would probably move away from Microsoft’s strategy of using these programs to drive demand for its flagship Windows operating system on personal computers and mobile devices, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the 49-year-old executive hasn’t finalized or publicly discussed his analysis of the business. Most of Microsoft’s software has been tied to running on Windows.