On Calacanis and Murdoch
15 November 2009
I’ve already ranted about this issue over there, but I think it’s time for a more in depth post about this issue.
To sum it up: Jason Calacanis is obviously desperate for some PR so he stated, that Murdoch can hurt Google by removing his content from the Google index and licensing it to one or several smaller search engines who are willing to pay him a handsome fee. The argument is that Microsoft would be willing to pay a lot for this. Calacanis already has a scenario in which Microsoft would not only pay Murdoch a lot of money, but also start a new advertising campaign in which they remind people that they only will get results from Murdoch sites on Bing. That’s after they have spent 80 million on the Bing launch campaign and not to mention, that the Microsoft search department is not really profitable. Quite the contrary, actually.
And there is more.
It is clear that Murdoch will primarily hurt his content. There is data for that. Removing himself from the Google index will hurt a lot in the US, but it will be even worse in markets such as Germany where Google is even more dominant. Compensating for that with a partner like Bing will not succeed, because Bing and the other search engines combined aren’t even close to catching up on Google.
Yes, Microsoft could launch another advertising campaign and they might even try. But it won’t change a thing. Please remember the Bing launch. In the first couple of weeks you could basically read everywhere about how Bing’s market share is growing, how they overtook Yahoo and such. The reality is: yes, Microsoft can push people to use Bing for a while, but as advertising budgets ran out, so did the users. Google’s market share grew in the last few months. For the record should be stated that Google is also running a big advertising campaign.
But that’s not even the big picture here. Thing is, why did people start to trust the Internet more than the classic media? Because the internet gave them the ability to actually find things they are really interested in and not only the content by the big media companies. The user’s intention, while using a search engine, is to find the content they wants. Sometimes it’s the content that’s provided by a media company (it’s by far not always something by Rupert Murdoch, but he will make his competitors very happy by removing himself from the Google index). But mostly it’s not. It’s just content that is being provided by the millions of blog authors, Twitter users and such. It’s not the big brand name that decides what we read as much it’s the stuff we find on the first five search results. Or why do you thing SEO is such a big issue? And I’m not even touching stuff like quality, authenticity and non-biased information.
So, by all means, Mr. Murdoch, remove your content from the Google index. It would actually be a poetic justice. You’ve been a cancer in the media industry for quite a long time. It would actually be nice if you were to see your empire, including such disgraces as Fox News, crumble while you’re still alive. And it would be very, very cool, if you were the one who is actually destroying your lifes work.
And Jason, please stop talking gibberish. You should know better.
Igor, I don’t necessarily agree. I don’t think everything is so obvious and I also don’t think bloggers guarantee unbiased information. Personally I am opposing Murdoch’s move. But I think he has got an idea other than simply getting off the google index and then nothing… google has already offered News publishers to help them pay for their content. I think Calacanis’ interview is pretty valid.
— Gerald · Nov 15, 06:49 PM · #
Don’t take my word for it, read what Jeff Jarvis has to say about that: http://bit.ly/1xltpX – he does have some interesting numbers and pretty solid arguments.
One more thing, that got me very confused: why did Calacanis and Arrington pushed the New York Times into their argument. It’s obvious, that the NYT doesn’t have the same issues with the internet. They’re actually quite good at what they’re doing. It’s only too bad, that the marketing budgets are still shrinking.
Concerning the payments from Google to publishers: well, they’re doing already. They’ve paid incredible amount of money to Murdoch for MySpace and they’re paying a lot of money through Google Books. I would say, that both are very strategic decisions. The payments to News Corp. where made to wiggle Murdoch off. They openly communicated, that there is no real business in the 700 Mio MySpace search deal for them, because they’re not seeing enough ROI, but they where willing to do that anyway. Why? Well, trust is the most important issue for Google, because it’s so easy to switch products in the digital age. And one thing is clear, Murdoch and his media empire are very well suited to create an aura of distrust. Fox News is spreading hate all day long. That’s something very important to way into the calculation.
As for Google Books: I believe Google, when they say that they are trying to save as much information as they can. They are visionaries and information nerds. There is no doubt in the world, that they can make this data work for them, but I also don’t have a doubt about their motivation. Paying the publishers is a compromise. And a fair one at that.
— Igor Schwarzmann · Nov 15, 07:05 PM · #
Forget the ad campaign for now. What i like about this is the hypothesis that any publisher do this just to break Google’s monopoly. Or more than one publisher for that matter. Let’s consider the NYT did this – wouldn’t you want to use a search engine where you could find their stuff opposed to one where NYT articles were missing. This might be a way for newspapers to make miney online for 2-3 years while they figyre out a truly sustainable model.
Just a hypothesis.
— Sebastian Keil · Nov 15, 07:09 PM · #
My point is, that they wouldn’t break Google’s monopoly. Not Murdoch, not even in partnership with several other publishers.
Internet users are providing an almost ubiquitous amount of data information. We stopped being dependent on a small group of creators and become the creators ourself. That’s the whole “big change” we are all talking about for years now. Why isn’t that so obvious, that a few websites out of billions can’t change the behaviour of the internet users? Sorry, there might be something that I’m missing, but I truly believe that publishers aren’t as important for the decision process of users. Big brands are almost dead and that’s a good thing in this case.
And I certainly would not stop using Google (or any other search engine), if it would not contain the nyt.com articles. To the contrary, I would actually think less about the NYT and trust is something that the big publishing brands need dearly. If there is no trust, there aren’t any readers.
But I’m not even sure, that I would actually detect the difference. I rarely find the information that I’m looking for in form of content by a big publisher. I’m a regular NYT reader, but finding the good articles by either finding them myself (the NYT is one of my top bookmarks) or via twitter.
— Igor Schwarzmann · Nov 15, 07:23 PM · #