Last week we told you about Tim O'Reilly's concern about the impending Web wars fought by giant industry players looking to replace one another. The news today about a potential deal between Microsoft and News Corp. to delist the latter's content from Google suggests these wars are really heating up.
News Corp. has not been shy about its distaste for Google. At the recent Web 2.0 Summit, an editor from The Wall Street Journal, Robert Thompson, said that "Google wants to be a home page and a front page," and that Google's VP of search, Marissa Mayer, "unintentionally promotes promiscuity." Shortly thereafter, Rupert Murdoch said he planned to de-index his sites' content from Google once News Corp. implements pay models.
In the midst of it all, Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo, made some noise with a suggestion that if Microsoft wants to kill Google, it should make exclusive deals with publishers. Plenty of bloggers said Calacanis's idea held no water. In addition to rattling off a series of reasons why such a deal wouldn't hurt Google, Danny Sullivan from SearchEngineLand wrote:
It's an extremely odd move to me for Microsoft to be trying to strike exclusive deals like this. It's one thing to license content. It's another to try and suggest that a competitor be locked out. Microsoft has a terrible anti-competitive reputation... You can expect that Google will use an anti-competitive partnership with News Corp. as a sign of arguing that Microsoft is 'back to its old tricks' to pressure against [the Yahoo deal].
But today The Financial Times reports that Microsoft and News Corp. have entered early discussions about a deal whereby the company would de-index its content from Google but keep it on Bing. FT says Microsoft has been in touch with other publishers as well.
This tactic isn't all that shocking: Recall that Steve Ballmer has said he's willing to spend whatever it takes for Bing to become a real competitor to Google. But will it work? Is this the answer to defeating Google?
Proobbbbably nottttt. Well, not this alone, at least.
OK, let's assume Microsoft gets away with this, despite its seeming uber-anti-competitive. But let's say Google rolls its eyes and the Department of Justice falls asleep and misses the whole thing. A potential deal whereby Microsoft pays News Corp. to index its content exclusively with Bing could be a big deal... for News Corp. and any other publisher wanting a long-sought payday from the search engines that index their content.
But as far as this turning Bing into a surefire Google killer? Considering that the majority of people doing searches on Google are seeking plenty of information beyond news headlines, I'm not sure acquiring News Corp. content will raise the little green line quite that high.
However, at the very least, if this somewhat unlikely situation pans out, it might give the search-engine landscape the interesting makeover it's been lacking since Google became omnipotent. Alleged Google competitors have come and gone, but none have been successful at offering something that Google can't. But with enough steam from the publishing world -- and a chunk of Microsoft's money -- Bing may be able to do just that.
And in that case, if Bing succeeds at stealing some of Google's thunder by making exclusive deals with publishers and thereby banning their content from Google's index, one might start to legitimately consider that "evil" is a contagious ailment in the search-o-spehere.
What started as random threat from an old-media Mogul seems to be having a revolutionary impact as even the mighty Google has suddenly make 180 degrees U-turn. How times have change!!
I agree that content providers deserve to be paid for their work, and the iTunes model might work for journalism, too, despite the disparities between news and music. (Here, I will avoid cynical references to infotainment and the de-evolution of journalism, besides this one, of course). And in a free market, businesses should be able to profit in any way that does not harm others. My problem with this model is that it does not contribute to the pursuit of excellence. What will drive News Corp to improve (online, anyway) if their only paying customer is Microsoft? They (News Corp) becomes subject to the tryanny of an exclusive agreement. They make a little money, Microsoft makes a little money, the public is not served.
The other side of this (drum and fife, please) is that an informed citizenry is hte basis of a free society, and this, to me, is the true value of the internet. Restricting access, at least to the awareness that particular information exists, is contrary to that value. Who is served by creating arcane pathways to find this content? Feel free to charge me for content (let me decide its value), but don't force me to aggregated search engine results in order to find it.
What is wrong for companies want to be paid for their content. I agree, citizen journalism will fill certain gap, example - a riot happening at times square, anyone with a mobile phone can broadcast that information, but not all of us can have obama's interview or angelina jolie's interview. Only Jay Lenos of the media world can do it. Obviously to create a mass following and reputation they need to spend money and ofcourse needs money to their bills. Even if federal government makes internet freely accessible for all of us, still content generation is someone else's property. We are happy to pay 99c for a song at itunes, so why we would not consider paying money for news source.
Ofcourse, MS interest in search industry is obvious. I believe it is not Microsoft's goal to become search leader (they would be surprisingly happy if they did), but their hidden goal is to distract Google so Big G will leave MS alone and they attain an understanding that both are going to accept each other's existence much like IBM and MS.
I'm sure the net nuetrality folks will have a lot to say about this. Microsoft will surely look like the spoiler in this, and since users have largely rejected the notion of paying for content directly, I'm not sure this business model works for anyone, save to create inefficiencies that lead to profit by exclusivity.
But I think users won't miss what they don't see. Bye bye, News Corp. Information longs to be free.
Great points, David, and I think a lot of us have been predicting the "end of free" for quite awhile. Microsoft has the resources, and established publishers are looking to get their payday back. So something like this could certainly stir things up. However, do you see any conflicts here with regard to this being anti-competitive? I don't think it's a problem if Microsoft is willing to pay for content and Google isn't, but if the deal is that News Corp. gets paid if and only if it removes its content from Google, I think that could be a big problem.
On an article by The Guardian, the ask if the Bing deal could dent Google. According to a report by a German agency that wonder what would happen if most of the country's publishers (~1,000 domains) removed their content from the search engine.
They used 1M keywords and showed that on average 5% of the top 10 results came from German news organizations. So... maybe it's not really a big deal.
Google (and the other lesser search engines) have succeeded by directing people to content - often free content. Google makes all the money and the sites with the free content than struggle to upsell products or get ad-based revenues.
If Bing is willing to pay for content that "could" open the door up to the concept that the search engines have to pay for the content they direct to. That could dramatically redistribute the wealth to many other content players.
Microsoft is walking a fine line as where do you draw the line - when does a search sit have to pay to direct traffic to cetain content versus not paying. One that payment genie is out fo the bottle - it will be hard to get back in.
It's an interesting strategy for Microsoft. On the one hand it could limit the potential revenue/profit for the entire search industry, but it might still mean more revenues/growth for Bing versus Google.
With the Bing cashback to buyers, Microsoft has already shown that it is willing to pay for traffic.
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