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Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

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Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#11

Post by brown9-2 »

alttab wrote: post #2

"I'll pay you not to use the competitor that possibly brings you more than half of your discoveries, new customers, and revenue." Sounds like a sound business model to me. On a more serious note, I'm actually afraid of the collective ignorance of most computer users today that Microsoft could win out with manipulative business practices like this - most internet users are layman and don't understand the integrity iss…

"I'll pay you not to use the competitor that possibly brings you more than half of your discoveries, new customers, and revenue."

Well to be fair, these morons were initially threatening to do remove themselves from Google for free!

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#14

Post by gloob »

qeorge wrote: post #10
alttab wrote: post #2

"I'll pay you not to use the competitor that possibly brings you more than half of your discoveries, new customers, and revenue." Sounds like a sound business model to me. On a more serious note, I'm actually afraid of the collective ignorance of most computer users today that Microsoft could win out with manipulative business practices like this - most internet users are layman and don't understand the integrity iss…

I think you're being a bit dramatic here. Whats the difference between this and Playstation paying for Grand Theft Auto's exclusivity, or Bing and Google paying for access to Twitter's content while small engines like DuckDuckGo go without? Or the NFL network only allowing coverage of most football games on DirecTV/Dish? I'm not judging the business model's merits, but selling exclusive access to content is nothing n…

I think you're being a bit dramatic here. Whats the difference between this and Playstation paying for Grand Theft Auto's exclusivity, or Bing and Google paying for access to Twitter's content while small engines like DuckDuckGo go without? Or the NFL network only allowing coverage of most football games on DirecTV/Dish?

I'm not judging the business model's merits, but selling exclusive access to content is nothing new.

I'm coming at this from a completely different angle, which is entirely unfair (:P), but the big difference is that moving a closed-source, inherently-system-dependent piece of software onto another system against the will of the original developers is notably non-trivial, while ignoring a robots.txt file is a fairly straightforward exercise.

If this would-be "exclusivity" comes to pass, it won't last for very long. Even if above-board companies like Microsoft and Google continue to play by the nominal rules, something vaguely similar to the Pirate Bay is bound to pop up eventually, especially when such a massive, glaring hole in the market is present. I mean, what good is a search engine that doesn't even search properly?

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#17

Post by aristus »

javery wrote: post #16

Is there any reason Google can't just index it anyway?

A copyright lawsuit? Remember that a search engine ultimately functions at the sufferance of copyright owners. If push comes to shove, the engine is obligated to stop storing and serving data they do not own.

When Google was ascendant, the threat of a delist was enough to cow copyright owners into submission (see: news orgs vs Google News, Belgium vs Google, etc). Now, well, who knows?

That said I think this is a greedy and dangerous move on Microsoft's part, and I'm sure this is what Murdoch was alluding to a couple of weeks ago. This could kill the spirit of 'net neutrality for good if they simply move the battle to different layer of the stack.

On the other hand, I like writing metasearchers, so it might be a net win for me. :)

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#18

Post by dtf »

dpcan wrote: post #3

It looks to me like a PUBLISHER was quoted as saying "puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them." This means publishers appear to be using some leverage with search engines, forcing them into the position of possibly having to purchase the right to index their content. This is kind-of what Twitter is doing with bing, right? Imagine if WebMD started doing this, followed…

Metacrawler has been running longer than Google. Strange we could go back to using these kind of search engines.

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#19

Post by javery »

aristus wrote: post #17
javery wrote: post #16

Is there any reason Google can't just index it anyway?

A copyright lawsuit? Remember that a search engine ultimately functions at the sufferance of copyright owners. If push comes to shove, the engine is obligated to stop storing and serving data they do not own. When Google was ascendant, the threat of a delist was enough to cow copyright owners into submission (see: news orgs vs Google News, Belgium vs Google, etc). Now, well, who knows? That said I think this is a gre…

Are you sure that indexing is a copyright violation? You aren't reproducing the text in full and it seems like excerpts would be part of fair use. Do you have a source?

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#20

Post by aristus »

javery wrote: post #19
aristus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A copyright lawsuit? Remember that a search engine ultimately functions at the sufferance of copyright owners. If push comes to shove, the engine is obligated to stop storing and serving data they do not own. When Google was ascendant, the threat of a delist was enough to cow copyright owners into submission (see: news orgs vs Google News, Belgium vs Google, etc). Now, well, who knows? That said I think this is a gre…

Are you sure that indexing is a copyright violation? You aren't reproducing the text in full and it seems like excerpts would be part of fair use. Do you have a source?

I depends on the country but yes, and yes.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2005/09/68928

http://cci.edu.au/publications/search-engine-liability-copyr...

Parker v Yahoo takes the view that putting content online is implicitly allowing indexing. By the same logic, explicitly blocking an engine would mean the opposite.

http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2008/10/search_engine_c...

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