TechCrunch agrees with Cory's (and Jason Calacanis') predictions from last week: Murdoch is about to sign an exclusivity deal with an also-ran search engine. (There was more at the Graun.) Mike Arrington, however, suggests this will succeed in hurting Google.
Hurting Google
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It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I actually predict this will backfire spectacularly. People do not use search engines based on what's indexed. They use search engines much of the time because they don't know what exactly they're looking for. I'm not particularly emotionally involved except for the fact that I hate Murdoch (but really who doesn't?) so no matter what I'll enjoy watching the fireworks. I predict that all will return to the status quo soon enough.
Hypothetically, let's assume F** News somehow becomes linked in the minds of the public to B***. Would that be good for PR?
There are implications to journalism, here, too: if all media producers suddenly have a vested interest in the success or failure of one major player in tech (Google) or another (Microsoft), can we expect them to be able to cover tech fairly? I mean, this isn't to say that Murdoch's news outlets are impartial, now (I mean, people don't even have to offer any kind of explanation when they put scare-quotes around "fair and balanced," anymore), but still...
I see that Fox News has purged YouTube of clips, but only the ones being used on channels that disagree with Fox's political bent. http://rawstory.com/2009/11/fox-shuts-liberal-bloggers/
There seems to be a great disturbance in the force, and Rupert Murdoch seems to be at the heart of it.
Yeah, Fox News ghetto-ized to Bing would be fine, or even preferable, to most people on either side of the political spectrum.
But if the product is search, this achieves nothing. Maybe the product is actually gatekeeping, pre-vetting, or censorship of dissent. In capitalist America, totalitarian Chinese censorship looks awfully familiar.
(Odd related note: Today I looked up a comedic anime called Samurai Pizza Cats, to find a bewildering example of American censorship: they changed a translated quote of "senseless violence" to "heroic bravery" -- really!)
Great, now i'll have to use more than one search engine to find my info.
Stupid tradeoff between competition and ease of searching.
In the video, they keep talking about the Wall Street Journal. Ever since Murdoch bought it, I've thought that if they mess with it enough, it will lose most of its good name. I think it's already lost a lot of it, and that search exclusivity deals would make it lose more of it, at which point I could see a Google user not care if it turns up as long as they find relevant results elsewhere.
Would it hurt Google? Sure, it would hurt Google a little, and a little more for each news source they lost, and sure, if they could pull it off as the article suggests, could be a big loss for Google.
But the whole idea is nonsense. Bing can't afford to offer exclusivity deals to every site in the world; where's the financial incentive for Bing in this? See, the point is for them to generate revenue by indexing sites, not pay fees to index sites. This is an arms race that Bing and Murdoch will lose badly, if they only do the math involved.
I don't think MSFT was ever super concerned with making money. The earnings are a side-effect that have helped them along. Gates' goal is domination.
I'm not a big fan of M$, but I wouldn't mind seeing some more balance come back to the equation. I don't like any one company dominating tech/the Internet. Working in an IT department, I see Google moving in on multiple fronts. While I think it's a good thing in general, I'm not sure that just one search engine is a good thing in the long run.
(And, by the way, can I say that I find it terrifying how many commentators seem to think that Google is *not* in it for the money. They just have a smarter approach about world domination.)
I don't generally use search engines to read news stories. If I read WSJ or NYT it's because they have been linked to on boingboing. I can't see how this could hurt google spectacularly, more than a percentage point or two in market share to Bing. Given my general distrust of all things Rupert Murdoch, it just me it easier for me to avoid his myriad publishing.
@boojum_uc - Yea. Their approach to world domination is "lets make products of great quality". And what the competitors are trying to do is not match that quality with their own. The plan is "lets make google less good". You sure you wanna stand behind this?
I am not sure how but couldn't someone (hackers you listening?), just at links from Bing TO Google some how like adding a mirror? There should be a way for Murdoch to spend all kinds of money AND get screwed by his avarice.
This may be a little off-topic, but am I the only one who thought Rupert Murdoch was the inspiration for Ozzie Mandrill's character in Escape from Monkey Island?
I miss adventure games.
"The Graun"???? WTF? Where did THAT come from?
Those with long memories who remember the old days when The Guardian did have more than its fair share of typos will be familiar with "The Grauniad" - but "The Graun"? Really?
There may be a first time for every coinage, but this one is base metal.
I don't think it'll hurt google in the slightest. Murdoch's sites do not have exclusive control of the information they put up. Someone else will be more than happy to take the traffic.
It's kind of like a game of chicken, hoping that the internet will blink before they do. The problem is that the internet doesn't care.
anonymous-- yep. I'll stand behind it. I am not comfortable with any company having a virtual monopoly on information sources. A non-profit, possibly. But Google, whatever its roots, is a huge publicly traded entity. I don't want them setting my information policy or controlling my desktop. I don't want anyone else doing it either-- I'll take a nice splintered market, thank you very much.
Ever since a few years ago when google was the only search engine that forced the feds to actually come up with court orders for information that all the other search engines just turned over no questions asked I have exclusively used google. This is my permanent policy and will remain so.
Well, I can't imagine this working out for Murdoch, but whatever, maybe it will. I don't think I care particularly since I can't remember the last time any of my searches yielded a result for any of Murdoch's holdings. I mean, its possible, but mostly I'm not searching for news (see comment #1)
BUUUUT, just to put this out there, there's an add-on for the Firefox search field called Bing-vs-Google that will display both products results head-to-head in the same window. So... if it comes down to it, seems like that would fix any problems you may encounter, assuming anything really comes of this ridiculous scheme of Murdoch's. You ARE using Firefox, aren't you? :P
The really troubling part of all this, personally, is that the state / capital city I live in only has ONE daily paper - a News Limited publication.
By putting this information behind a pay wall, what little is left of the invaluable bits of investigative journalism in my town will be locked up, and we'll be reliant on natiuonal publications taking an interest in small town politics (Adelaide, Au. Pop. 1.2m)
So we are going to have liberal and conservative search engines? Can a metasearch engine search them both for me?
[Google's] approach to world domination is "lets make products of great quality"
A succinct summary of Google's approach if you ask me.
Google are constantly bringing ground-breaking things to the table - usually for free. Other companies then release comparative (but more expansive/less effective) products, and try to take the fight to public opinion.
This is what Google do that not many other tech companies do: They never talk themselves up and they don't overestimate their abilities.
They also don't buy into smear campaigns.
And the wingnuts seal themselves into their own sphere. My rightwing friends send me emails with some outrageous crap in the subject title, and they ususally link to Pox or the Wall Street Urinal (editorial section). If the linked articles are behind the paywall, then why bother?
This will be a good test of wingnut loyalty. Will Pox's core audience pony up? Meanwhile, here's hoping the Moonie Times, the WaPo (in its current incarnation), Excellence in Broadcasting, Pajamas Media and Townhall.com jump aboard as well.
This is, of course, excellent news for John McCain. Also.
How many people nowadays even care if they find a result from a big dinosaur media company like News Corp or Time Warner, or even from the NYT?
I believe Google will win this fight easily. If Murdoch jumps exclusively to Bing he will simply find his audience disappearing even faster than it already is. End of story (and good f***ing riddance to all of them).
I'm not sure there is such a thing as a closed thread here, but I am certain that none of the Boingers want advice on how they're doing it wrong.