

The Definition of Evil: Microsoft's Search Wars Hurt Us All - mgrouchy
http://gizmodo.com/5411045/the-definition-of-evil-microsofts-search-wars-hurt-us-all

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dkasper
If selling their content to search engines can save the newspapers then maybe
it's not such a bad thing. Search engines have always enjoyed a free ride,
which was probably a good thing in the beginning. But at this point I don't
see how search engines having to pay for their content is going to cause the
apocalypse some are predicting. If search engines don't want to pay for the
content then then content isn't as valuable as Fox and others think it is. If
content producers think they can get away with not being listed in a major
search engine then they should be allowed to. More than likely both parties
can come to terms.

~~~
vaporstun
I agree this is fair if everyone has a fair chance to index that content for
an equal price. If any search engine were allowed to index Fox's content (or
any other site of course) for an equal fee then this is fair. It is fair and
just for content creators to get paid. However if, as the article suggests,
there is exclusivity and a case where Bing is allowed to index it and Google
is not given a fair chance at such, this could run afoul of antitrust laws.

As I mentioned in a sub-comment below, exclusivity like this is inherently
anti-competitive which has a high likelihood to be found in violation of
antitrust. (Example:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc.))

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biznerd
This guy sounds like a techno-evangelist. Evil? George Bush used those same
words.

The world is much more complex than "good" and "evil".

Notice he doesn't even mention that media companies will greatly benefit?
Journalism positions will be preserved. And I'm sorry, blogs for the most part
digest and regurgitate news. It's newspapers for the most part that need to
cover expensive journalism such as "long form" and stuff like government
corruption. So the average citizen will benefit as well.

~~~
req2
I don't think you've defended your position as well as you think you have, and
you didn't need to stoop to the "liberal Godwin". He implies a pretty basic
definition of evil- that which hurts everyone else. It's not given that this
is better for newspapers than open search engine access, nor that this
preserves the production of "beneficial" news.

~~~
biznerd
You've made no effort to argue with me, you've merely tried to deconstruct my
argument like I was writing a proof in a ethics class.

Unfortunately this is hacker news, not philosophy news. Provide a counter-
argument that is based on the topic because I have no desire to argue with a
troll trying to sound smart.

~~~
req2
You're hasty applying the troll label, and slow to support any of your
arguments.

As I mentioned above, "It's not given that this is better for newspapers than
open search engine access, nor that this preserves the production of
"beneficial" news."

Can you explain why media companies "greatly benefit" from being excluded from
major search engines? Can you show why this means that "beneficial"
investigative journalism continues, increasing the overall welfare of citizens
moreso than open access for search engines? For that matter, can you show that
newspapers do more "long form" and expose more government corruption than
bloggers do in aggregate? What if newspapers accept this deal and transition
to more "blog" articles and fewer "investigative" articles, leaving citizens
with "no" investigative articles and no single search destination?

Being first mover doesn't give you the right to assert every piece of your
argument.

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kilps
I'm rather surprised by all the comments here who don't seem to see a problem
with fragmented search.

As the article points out, such a strategy means that newcomers to the market
have to compete based on initial funding - not technology. And to claim that
Google has a 'free ride' is rubbish - for that to happen it would have to be a
one sided relationship, but here news being indexed by Google is mutually
beneficial - with one partner starting to get a bit greedy.

~~~
dagw
Obviously both sides don't agree that the relationship is mutually beneficial.
If one side not only thinks they can sell what they have, but also finds a
buyer willing to pay, is it really greedy to walk away from their current
deal. It is not evil for content producers to want to get paid, nor is it evil
of them to do business with people who want to pay them.

Search is already fragmented with plenty of sites indexing private article
databases not available to Google, how is one more going to make that much of
a difference?

~~~
kilps
I don't really buy the argument that either Microsoft or the content creators
are 'evil' - yes it is only natural to want to be paid - but that doesn't mean
that if it happens it won't be a bad thing.

On your second point - search is by no means as fragmented as this would
result in it being. The specialised databases you speak of are just that,
currently our expectation is that Google, Bing, et al all index the web we see
on a day to day basis. Ideally those databases (if they are already in some
form 'public') should be indexable by all search engines - it's the best thing
for the consumer, and is pure competition on the technical front.

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stcredzero
Why will people care? We'll just get search aggregator sites as a result. If
these do their job right, then the impact to the user experience will be
minimal. The only harm will be to Google and Microsoft's pocketbook.

<http://duckduckgo.com/>

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vaporstun
This sounds like a classic antitrust issue. Definition of antitrust from
Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act:

A Section 1 violation has three elements:

1\. An agreement

2\. which unreasonably restrains competition

3\. and which affects interstate commerce.

If Microsoft were to make such an agreement with Fox where they would pay them
to be delisted from Google, it would be an agreement which unreasonably
restrains competition and it affects interstate commerce. (As would anything
online which is a revenue source)

I surely wouldn't put evil past Microsoft, but I doubt they would actually be
so stupid, especially given their prior too-close-for-comfort experiences with
federal antitrust law.

~~~
qeorge
_"If Microsoft were to make such an agreement with Fox where they would pay
them to be delisted from Google, it would be an agreement which unreasonably
restrains competition and it affects interstate commerce. (As would anything
online which is a revenue source)"_

This is the part I don't agree with. I fail to see how not having the FIM
properties in a search engines' index precludes Google (or anyone else) from
competition.

SAA cases are hard to prove. This wouldn't cut it IMHO (IANAL though, so who
knows).

Anecdotally, Google not having MySpace, Fox News, and the other FIM properties
in their index would actually be a selling point to me. IMHO, Microsoft is
choosing the wrong content to lock down (although I do see the inherent "First
they came for Fox News" problem here).

~~~
vaporstun
While you're right that SAA cases are notoriously hard to prove, I simply
don't think that Microsoft would even attempt something touching anything in
that space given their history.

And the act was initially created in order to level the playing field to
encourage fair competition. It does not seem farfetched for someone to argue
that by using its immense resources to sweep Fox out of Google's index,
Microsoft is engaging in unfair competition. This is the specific type of
anticompetitive action the Sherman Act was enacted to prevent.

While it's true this probably wouldn't go anywhere without them getting to a
point where they have a majority market share in search, this is a slippery
slope and one I still think they won't go down, even if the viability of an
antitrust case is low.

Can't argue that getting everything Fox off of Google would be fantastic, but
the greater trend of fighting financially for search indexing would snowball
into a huge mess. Imagine if you had to go to Bing to find stuff on Fox,
Google for CNN, and Yahoo for BBC? The internet as we know it would start to
fall apart.

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mattmichielsen
Remember how sweet <http://dogpile.com> was back in the
altavista/excite/yahoo/etc days of category-based search engines? Are we going
to have to use search aggregators again? I sure hope not.

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selven
The problem with Microsoft's business tactics in the search area is that
they're not improving their product - instead, they're literally paying people
to use it. While moving your price down into the negatives may be legitimate
price competition, paying Murdoch not to index his sites on Google is
bordering on antitrust. I welcome competition to Google - even if I will never
use Bing it will still force Google to improve its own search engine, but it
should be real competition by making a superior product, not this.

~~~
qeorge
_"paying Murdoch not to index his sites on Google is bordering on antitrust"_

The Sherman Antitrust Act doesn't really apply here, as I understand it.
Antitrust is when a company uses its dominant market position to make
competition impossible.

 _"While moving your price down into the negatives may be legitimate price
competition"_

That's actually a lot more likely to be deemed antitrust.

~~~
selven
"The Sherman Antitrust Act doesn't really apply here, as I understand it.
Antitrust is when a company uses its dominant market position to make
competition impossible."

I was thinking of the Microsoft antitrust trials where, IIRC, Microsoft was
criticized pretty hard for its licensing scheme which made OEMs pay MS for
every computer, not just those with Windows, if they wanted to pay less than
the massive consumer per-license price. This is pretty similar, although Bing
is the one trying to crawl into the market rather than stay in.

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enjo
How can they truly 'de-list'? If the content is still open and accessible,
what's to stop a spider from indexing it? I'm not a lawyer, but I have to
imagine that falls well within the domain of fair use as long as your not
presenting the content back for public consumption.

~~~
chollida1
> what's to stop a spider from indexing it?

a robots.txt that forbids a particular spider from accessing the content.

This assumes that the spider does respect the robots.txt, which googlebot
does.

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Tichy
Is there a law against it? I thought robots.txt is more of a convention.
However, Google already said that they would heed the robots.txt.

~~~
chollida1
> Is there a law against it?

I don't know. I'd imagine that there isn't a law specifically written for
robots.txt and scraping.

If a case went to court I'd imagine it would be settled based on laws meant
for things like "keep out" and "No trespassing" signs:)

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dminor
I'm having trouble envisioning a world where a majority of content creators
are dumb enough license their content exclusively to a single search engine.
If a clueless handful want to pay Microsoft to hasten their own death, then by
all means let them.

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cschep
I can't help but think that not having Fox News in Google's search results
will only improve said results.

