How Bing could kill Google • Hacker News Board

Re: How Bing could kill Google

#51

Post by 979s » Tue, Nov 10, 2009, 4:59 AM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #29

theli0nheart wrote: post #13

I think this is missing the point, which is that the new generation doesn't care about ink and paper news. There are some out there that seem to believe that people will "miss" outlets such as the NYTimes and WSJ, but I don't think that they will. All that really matters to people is getting relevant information and opinions about current events. Part of me thinks that most of the people defending ink and paper are d…

I don't think the post was about ink and paper, it was not even about news. It's was about the increasing influence of content owners and commoditization of aggregators and search engines. Finishing his sentence one could say that nothing stops Bing from going after top 500 bloggers and essentially offering them cash to opt out of Google index. It can actually work: while the Internet is huge, the 80/20 principle sti…

Alternatively, strategies like this could segregate users on search. Football and Nascar on bing and an entire class of citizens have left Google. Makes me think of Myspace and Facebook.

Re: How Bing could kill Google

#52

Post by cakesy » Tue, Nov 10, 2009, 5:09 AM UTC

phil wrote: post #39

This is the same strategy that Sirius used when they tried to 'break' normal radio by signing Howard Stern. That deal seems to have worked out pretty well for Stern, but was a disaster for Sirius. It might work just as well for Bing!

Looking at one example, the one that favors your opinion is useless. Yes, sometime this works, sometimes it doesn't.

Re: How Bing could kill Google

#53

Post by zaphar » Tue, Nov 10, 2009, 5:43 AM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #29

theli0nheart wrote: post #13

I think this is missing the point, which is that the new generation doesn't care about ink and paper news. There are some out there that seem to believe that people will "miss" outlets such as the NYTimes and WSJ, but I don't think that they will. All that really matters to people is getting relevant information and opinions about current events. Part of me thinks that most of the people defending ink and paper are d…

I don't think the post was about ink and paper, it was not even about news. It's was about the increasing influence of content owners and commoditization of aggregators and search engines. Finishing his sentence one could say that nothing stops Bing from going after top 500 bloggers and essentially offering them cash to opt out of Google index. It can actually work: while the Internet is huge, the 80/20 principle sti…

The real question is how much would of a deal would you have to give WSJ to convince them to leave all of google's eyeballs behind? A bigger cut of a smaller pie is not necessarily a better deal.

Re: How Bing could kill Google

#54

Post by marcamillion » Tue, Nov 10, 2009, 8:16 AM UTC

With all due respect to Jason Calacanis, he has made his selling Weblogs to AOL...I get that. However, I honestly think that he doesn't understand the way media is changing. It's not about the 'few' large content creators anymore - it's about the millions of little content creators. The search engine business has not been commodotized, the content business has.

Sharing revenue with 'certain' content creators doesn't scale like paying the top digg users to submit content on Netscape doesn't scale.

I am not one of those that thinks that paper and ink will go away, I just think that the model is going to change drastically.

Weren't the lawsuits and withholding of 'professional content' from YouTube supposed to kill YouTube some years ago? What happened to that? Yes, Hulu is a nice destination, but wasn't that also supposed to 'kill Google'? Whenever I see Mark Cuban agreeing with Calacanis on some crazy tirade (http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/09/rupert-murdoch-to-block-g...) it really gives me pause. No offense to Mr. Cuban either.

Twitter & Facebook have not, and WILL NOT replace Google. It's that simple. Yes, they might perform some functions better than Google, but there are two different use cases for both sets of services. When I want to find general information about a topic (anything outside of 'real-time' info and my social graph) I go to Google first. Twitter and Facebook won't change that, because they are not even in that game.

Bing, on the other hand, is finally gaining ground and that's good. Competition is a good thing for the markets and is very healthy. Someone needs to keep Google in check.

This notion of throwing money at content providers/creators under the presumption that their content is what most of Google's traffic is in search for is a misguided notion.

I don't profess to know what (if anything) will kill Google, but I would recommend that Calacanis and Cuban go read 'The Long Tail' again. That is the future. As 37signals puts it, the Fortune 5,000,000 not Fortune 100.

Re: How Bing could kill Google

#55

Post by adrianwaj » Tue, Nov 10, 2009, 9:30 AM UTC

marcamillion wrote: post #54

With all due respect to Jason Calacanis, he has made his selling Weblogs to AOL...I get that. However, I honestly think that he doesn't understand the way media is changing. It's not about the 'few' large content creators anymore - it's about the millions of little content creators. The search engine business has not been commodotized, the content business has. Sharing revenue with 'certain' content creators doesn't…

There was a recent Sky News interview with Murdoch on YouTube, very good and I agree that the content business has been commoditized.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7GkJqRv3BI

Come to think of it, News Corp can put out good content and people will pay for it: but it's a downhill route in the broadest sense -- so long as their are content "selectors" - those that try to undercut News Corp will succeed if such selectors are pushing free content out well via Twitter. Free Writers and Free Selectors - and making their lives better - are the future.

Re: How Bing could kill Google

#56

Post by niqolas » Tue, Nov 10, 2009, 10:28 AM UTC

If this actually happened with key web properties (e.g. ALL NewsCorp papers, or Twitter, or NASCAR/NFL/etc exclusively on one search engine), I predict it would turn into a land grab which would ultimately just lead to segregation. However, the key question in my mind is:

Would users follow the sites they trust OR find new sites via the search engine they trust?

I'm guessing people would use the search engine they trust to source new information and then visit the sites they love (which have been excluded from their search) as a destination (i.e. going to WSJ.com direct and then searching content there)...

Google would still remain the No 1 search engine but WSJ etc would then have to rely more on their active user base. Not a smart decision for Mr Murdoch in my opinion.