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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

#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 issues of whats going on here.

It starts with the developers - we are the ones that create the software that start the market that feed the companies that buy into Microsoft's bull. Vote by code. Stand by it.

Seriously, stories like this make me sick to my stomach. I don't post such bold statements here usually because of the holes that could be punched in my statements by downvoters but there's absolutely no integrity in their business model.

Blech.

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#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 by others.

We'd have to go to Bing for some content, Google for other content, and there would be a PirateSearchBay that just indexed everything that people would be forced to use.

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#4
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'm not down voting you, it also irritates me. I do have to say though, restriction of content only lasts so long before even the laymen begin to realize their freedoms are suffocated. (slowly boiling the frog)

While Google is a company that produces a lot of innovative technology, operates a service and infrastructure that is highly useful; I wouldn't consider it strictly necessary.

What is more frightening to me, is the net neutrality war - if Google goes down, the internet remains. If freedom of the internet goes down, a very large portion of the internet will not remain (it could persist through Freenet &c... though).

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#6
What would stop the de-listed sites from appearing in Google search results via syndication/aggregation on blogs and other sites? Seems like they would be putting themselves in a weaker position by letting other sites capture the click-trhough traffic and apply their own spin to the content. In how many cases would the searcher be satisfied with the syndicated/aggregated summary and never click-through? They would have to insist Google de-list sites that link to the content for this to make any sense.

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#9
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'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 issues of whats going on here."

OK, so let's assume this will work, for this reason, and game it out. I don't hold up the following analysis as Truth, just some thoughts.

In the short term, even for several years, Microsoft could match any revenues to a news company that it chose. In the long term, though, the news company faces two outcomes: Bing essentially succeeds, and Bing essentially fails. In the first case, they essentially win and everything's hunky-dory. In the second case, they lose any independent market existence they have and become a Microsoft vassal, dependent on the Microsoft payoff to survive on the net.

So, taking this offer from Microsoft is effectively betting that Microsoft can successfully dethrone Google and beat them at their core competency. As a person interested in the software industry who has watched Microsoft thrash around in numerous fields over the past couple of decades, and scoring only one modest success outside of Windows and Office in that time frame (the games division, which still isn't in the Office/Windows league by any means), this is not a bet I'd care to make. I have no idea how a news company would see this, though.

(BTW, I'm judging "success" by "profit". Very few things at Microsoft make money. I believe the XBox division did finally break even fairly recently, and that makes them a rarity, and I could be misremembering.)

It seems to me it's going to be hard to convince a company to be the first to jump ship. "Hard" here of course mostly means "will take more money", but still, to pull this off successfully it seems like Microsoft will need to get not just one news organization, but several, and match it up with a very big, very expensive advertising campaign to boot.

It might work... but it seems to me it's more like a "Hail Mary" than a sound plan. But Hail Marys do sometimes work; I'm not saying it's impossible.

Re: Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google

#10
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 new.

"It starts with the developers - we are the ones that create the software that start the market that feed the companies that buy into Microsoft's bull. Vote by code. Stand by it."

You're confusing Microsoft the software company with Microsoft the advertising company. This has absolutely nothing to do with developers.

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