
Bing considers paying sites to delist themselves from Google - vaksel
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-news-corp-reportedly-consider-web-pact-over-google-2009-11-22
======
dpcan
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.

~~~
greyman
[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.]

Yes, that's correct, I think. They (or at least Murdoch) wants to do that.
Most of the folks here seems to defend Google, and some of their points are
valid, but let's try to look at the issue from the publishers point of view.
As it is now, Google just index their content, make a good money out of it,
and then give back only a link to that content. And when publisher wants money
for the indexing right, Google just says to them: "Shut up, be happy that
you've got a free link from us." But... why should the publisher agree with
that? They have a full right to ask money for indexing their content.

Now, I think this will be interesting. So far, Internet users have a
perception that "there is everything in Google", and it's also Google's core
mission, to index all of the worlds information. But it seems everyone just
supposed Google should have a right to index everything for free, so now
everyone seems surprised that it's not so.

But, it is not Murdoch who drilled a hole to Google's strategy, it was
Twitter. Google admitted they are willing to pay for indexing rights, so
Murdoch demands the same. I am really curious to see what Google will do about
it.

~~~
DarkShikari
_They have a full right to ask money for indexing their content._

Seriously?

A Dewey Decimal catalogue system should pay money for listing a book?

The White Pages should pay me for including my phone number?

People _pay to get entries in the Yellow Pages_ , not the other way around.

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alttab
"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. </sarcasm>

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.

~~~
qeorge
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.

~~~
gloob
_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?

~~~
robryan
A site could start blocking certain IPs and user agents as well if need be to
prevent being indexed, I'm sure there's was for crawlers to get around it but
a site could certainly make it hard to index there content.

~~~
bad_user
Then you could start sending requests via proxies ... and sooner or later the
site would start blocking legitimate users.

Either way, the majority of all new traffic comes from Google right now, and
if a website has exclusivity for Bing, it would surely lose a lot visits. And
it's definitely not worth it unless Microsoft pays really well for this
privilege ... and I'm not sure they can do that, even if they are Microsoft.

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jsz0
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.

~~~
greyman
As I understand it, Fox's ultimate goal is not to de-list themselves from the
Google, but to force Google to pay them for indexing.

------
Gormo
I wonder if this strategy is really intended to gain a foothold against Google
in search, or if they're trying to do something a bit more clever.

Google is the number one search engine, but grew into that position while the
web was growing, during a period when people went "on the internet" to find
information, rather than to any specific site, and a substantial proportion of
users were new to the internet altogether.

Now that the web has reached a higher level of maturity and become a tool of
mainstream, day-to-day life, people have begun to view many sites as
destinations in themselves.

Look at sites like Wikipedia, eBay, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. They are
very collaborative, and function like platforms, but unlike Google's core
business, people visit these sites specifically because of the content they
host, rather than as a means to explore the wider internet. Add to that the
increasing presence of traditional media content, e.g. Hulu, that have been
able to leverage conventional marketing to drive users to their sites.

Most of these sites are likely no longer heavily dependent on search to
attract users. These sites may be willing to delist from Google in exchange
for a direct revenue stream. If they do, it will diminish the value of not
just Google, but of web search in general.

This may be a strategy to fragment search as a primary driver of web traffic,
and create an incumbent advantage for content providers and web services with
high traditional brand awareness, such as its own, at the expense of startups
which continue to rely on search to build their user base.

------
cabalamat
Let's say News Corp and Microsoft did this. Let's also assume that News Corp
did other things to monetize their data, such as putting it behind a paywall,
preventing bloggers from quoting large sections of articles, if the Tories win
the British election getting them to shut down the BBC's news website, etc.

I think this could be an enormous opportunity for Google. They could create
their own news service (or maybe buy one). They could integrate it with Google
Ads, Reader, allow commenting social bookmarking, etc done in an open way to
get as much external take-up of the information as possible, and maybe
integrate it with Google Maps so that people could have a personalised local
news service.

The cost of this? BBC News has an annual budget of £350 million, so something
in that area.

If a lot of Google's competitors are voluntarily de-listing themseves from the
open internet, everyone would flock to Google's option.

~~~
ippisl
Google doesn't even have to build a news research organization. there are
enough people who see the opportunity and offer copies of news, and rephrased
news, given the ad revenue that would become availble. it just has to make few
changes to it's search engines, expose data from their toolbars/queries on
popular news articles/subjects , and let the newspapers fight with tons of
sites offering their content, or very similar contents for free.

------
chrischen
This isn't going to be good for the end user at all. Right now for the most
part search engines can focus on improving results. This will just degrade
results by fragmenting them, and detract from efforts to improve results.

If there's any sign that Bing is inferior to Google it's that Bing has to
artificially decrease the value of Google.

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

~~~
aristus
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. :)

~~~
javery
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?

~~~
aristus
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...](http://cci.edu.au/publications/search-engine-liability-copyright-
infringement)

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...](http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2008/10/search_engine_c.htm)

~~~
javery
The first link is about scanning, storing, and making available entire books.
The last is about the caching ability.

The second one includes some great information, but if you read about the
specific cases (starting on page 6) you can see it is still very much up for
debate. Actually it seems that the courts have ruled in Google's favor almost
every time, and most of these are for caching and not indexing.

~~~
aristus
You are right that search engines have made some advances in the courts in
recent years, but the bases for their wins are thin and not the same in all
countries. Barring legal action a site can block Google's known IPs entirely,
forcing a search engine to either give up or use subterfuges that are probably
not practical for a large public company to use.

If a site really really wants to block a particular engine run by a for-profit
company, or make it impractical (either legally or technically) they can.

------
anApple
You can all thank twitter for that. They only give access to their feed to a
few selected buddy companies. It was just a matter of time until other sites
follow and try to cash out on this!

------
shadow
So it seems like Bing gotten the idea from Jason Calacanis's How To Kill
Google

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTe15DEWp30>

Interesting development indeed.

------
known
This is like paying a candidate for _not_ contesting in elections aka
pagerank.

------
trafficlight
Is Microsoft going to drink their own Kool-aid and delist Bing?

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oscardelben
If Microsoft needs to pay user to delete them from google in order to gain new
users, how can I think of any quality from them? This sounds more like
manipulation to me.

~~~
bumblebird
sounds more like desperation to me.

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nazgulnarsil
[http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_should_the...](http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_should_the_government)

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neohacks
Intresting development. I would have never imagined this happening. In the
long run this will impact the profitability of search engines.

------
Tichy
How much money are we even talking about? And I don't mean the offering to
Fox, I mean how much money is Google making for searches for Fox news? My
guess is that it would be very little money. What searches (besides porn) are
the bulk of internet searches?

I don't think I have ever hit on a Fox web site in a web search, but then I am
not living in the US.

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kwamenum86
There is no way this could draw another antitrust lawsuit. No way.

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robotron
Google should preemptively stop indexing all News Corp sites.

