When Rupert Murdoch threatened to de-index the Wall Street Journal and his other News Corp. properties from Google, critics scoffed, claiming the executive was clueless about the web and shooting himself in the foot. They didn’t know about the ace Rupe was hiding in his pocket.
A report yesterday in the Financial Times claims News Corp. is in talks with Microsoft over plans to de-index content from Google, instead selling the right to index content exclusively through Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
In what appears to be an attack on Google’s business, Microsoft has reportedly been meeting with other high-end publishers, encouraging them to de-index with Google and provide content to Bing exclusively. Bing has made an effort to differentiate itself from Google by providing content not found in Google search results, but this marks the first time a search engine has offered to pay for the right to index news.
This development demonstrates the lengths to which Microsoft will go to make Bing a serious challenger to Google. Financial Times reports Microsoft is prepared to “spend heavily for many years” in order to beat Google. Business Insider's Jay Yarow estimates that banning Google will cost News Corp. a mere $15 billion per year, making Microsoft's costs manageable.
Microsoft’s expectations seem realistic; critics expect the price tag of such an endeavor to be hefty. TechCrunch remains skeptical of what benefits Bing will reap by paying for the right to index:
But it’s not clear how much Bing would have to pay the news companies of the world for them to give up all the traffic Google sends them in return for a fraction of that traffic and some cash...In order to actually make a dent in Google’s market share, Bing would have to pay such exorbitant sums to so many different news companies that it would be difficult to recoup its investment. Bing certainly get some marketing buzz out of any such move, but that’s about it.
Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, who predicted this move on November 8, anticipated nothing but doom for Murdoch and Microsoft:
Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump).
So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.
He may, in fact, get a taker. And it will be a disaster. A search engine whose sole competitive advantage is "We have Rupert Murdoch's pages!" will not attract any substantial traffic. The search engine will either go bust or fail to renew the deal.
Cough, cough. Who are you calling second-tier? (Disclosure: brandchannel's publisher, branding agency Interbrand, gave Bing its name.)
We disagree. The buzz will in fact help the months-old search engine raising its profile and brand awareness, and Microsoft's planned investment is deeper than Doctorow might have expected. To date Bing has showed promising growth, making month-by-month gains. Bing can capitalize on market share unless Google also moves to purchase content from News Corp. -- and other publishers -- or, alternately and perhaps more likely, pursues a legal course of action against News Corp.
If other publishers follow suit, this could make for a very interesting web war.
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