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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 i
by selven 17y ago
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.
- anigbrowl 17y agoIt's Murdoch's content (so to speak), he can license access to it as he sees fit. Search may be a de facto public utility, but it is not regulated as such. Besides, this hasn't even happened yet, it's just speculated upon. Gizmodo's editorial standards are not very high.
- qeorge 17y ago"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 17y ago"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.
- pchristensen 17y agoI don't know if I'm for or against the Bing/Fox deal, but this is a business model innovation for search engines and content sites. Clearly (some) content creators are unhappy with Google capturing less value than they create (for the content creators). Google is great b/c everything's in it, but if the long term effect is that there's less or lower quality content, does that make us winners? I don't know the answer to that, but I encourage the experimentation.