First off, MS's answer to the question is more than enough - "We appreciate Bloomberg’s foray into fiction and look forward to future episodes". Three unnamed people? Really?

Sherlund is an idiot. The proposition, if you ask any consultant/financial analyst/Rick Sherlund is to maximize shareholder value. The problem with MSFT, Apple, Google is that shareholders are short sighted and don't understand how technology works or the charms of integrated offerings. They only see Product/Service/Capability-Cost mappings and see that by disposing money losing assets, they can enhance value proposition through the remaining assets.

Elop's strategy is fine if MS is in a money crunch and wants to undertake Cost Optimizations. It's not fine when MS is in the midst of their "3 screens, one cloud" transformation. If XBox and Bing continue their trend of losing money in the next 5 years, then yes, I would do things that Elop is fictionally proposing to do. Until then, hell no.