Google vs. Bing

Lets start off with this:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/3909/758660-lolcat_super.jpg

Microsoft, who's motto is not "don't be evil" has started to go after Google on its home turf, search. Who would have thought that the way that you search for things would be so important, but it is more or less the way that we all get around the web, all the time.

Now, Rupert Murdoch (News Corp = Fox + WSJ and a lot of less important stuff) is thinking about putting up a pay wall and delisting from Google, and listing exclusively (for search) for Bing. Microsoft would of course pay for this privilege, just as MSFT and GOOG recently paid for the right to index Twitter's twits (not sure why the hell that was worth it).

Of course, the reaction everywhere across the media (and liberal media generally, as they all hate Rupert Murdoch and generally Microsoft) is that this is a huge and completely ridiculous, totally out of line, crazy, anti-internet, people hating, uncalled for and downright indecent thing to do.

But take another look. Google makes money every time you search, they make money selling ads on their own webpages, and they make money knowing what each and every one of us is into. What most websites talk about when they bring this dispute up is the fact that Google hosts some stories on its own servers - but these are with permission. The bigger issue is the aggregation of stories and news. In other words, Google host a summary article about another article, or new story, where they are just aggregating other sources of information. Google claims they are not making money off this because they dont advertise on those pages. But they are making money, because they keep users in the Google ecosystem and learn more about their tastes. More importantly, it absolutely means that News Corp and many others are losing revenue as users dont bother to click through.

So is this really all evil on the part of Microsoft and News Corp? I would say it is the other way around: Google has been stealing from the traditional news sources, and they were all too afraid and too small to do anything about it. All Google has to do is bump you down the rankings a little (and there are favorites in Google searches and Google news - why do the Christian Science Monitor or Xinhua show up so often anyway?) and your advertising revenues fall off a cliff.

In this case, the initial reaction of "keep everything free on the internet" may not tell the whole story. At the same time, it would be something of a tragedy as it would lock away one of the only sensible sources of US news left - the WSJ - from the majority of the populace. Yes, the WSJ already has something of a pay wall, but taking it off Google would also remove it to a small degree from public debate. So is it the right step? I am not sure about that. Is it an evil step? No.

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