Google v Microsoft: dog-eat-dog
p2pnet news | Advertising:- “Desperate and brilliant” is how TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington characterises Microsoft’s partnership with eBay and the latter’s PayPal.
Bill and the Boyz opened a new site, “in an unsavoury alliance with eBay and its No Australians Please PayPal to lure consumers who search on Microsoft Live and make a buy on eBay,” posted p2pnet yesterday.
In a Washington Post OpEd, Arrington says the move is “desperate” because, “Microsoft is giving away most of the search revenue to get market share gains” and “brilliant” because, “they have such a small share of search revenue today that they have little to lose, and they are hitting Google hard in their core business”.
Microsoft’s core revenue, “is derived from Windows and Office, and the future doesn’t look to be very bright for desktop software sales,” says the story, going on:
“Google’s revenues, currently at $20 billion a year, could someday surpass Microsoft’s (Microsoft is currently at about $50 billion/year in revenue) if nothing is done to change the game.
“Remember how everyone feared Microsoft’s dominance in the OS and Office worlds in the late nineties? That’s Google today in the search advertising space, a much bigger long term market.”
Arrington adds:
“The first thing I thought when I saw Live Search CashBack was that Microsoft is hitting Google where it hurts, in exactly the same way that Google is hitting Microsoft with their free online Office offerings. Google isn’t making much money on Docs, but it sure threatens Microsoft’s core revenue stronghold.
“Similarly, Microsoft isn’t likely to make much profit on Live Search Cashback, since they are giving most of the money back to users. But it hits Google in its sweet spot – commerce search. And it may have a bigger impact and a faster impact on Google than people realize. Docs is a still a future revenue threat to Microsoft – Live Search Cashback is taking money out of Google’s pockets today.
“The question, as I said above, is how much money they’re taking out of Google’s pockets. That’s yet to be seen. But Microsoft also made it clear that this is just a first step in the search war, and things are guaranteed to get a lot uglier in the near future.”
The one thing Arrington doesn’t mention is: it all hangs on you, the online ‘consumer’.
You have to be driven by the ads to continue consuming, consuming, consuming in a manner which’ll keep Google, Microsoft and the people paying for the ads in the first place, fat and happy.
Happy munching 
.
.Stumble It!
p2pnet – Microsoft, eBay, PayPal Money Day, May 21, 2008
Washington Post – The Empire Strikes Back: Our Analysis Of Microsoft Live Search Cashback, May 22, 2008
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May 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 am
And WE, the online consumers, can use the holy duo of Firefox+AdblockPlus, and forget ads even exist. I refuse to waste any of my broadband on unwanted content, my browser displays WHAT I want, WHEN I want it. Also, I can turn adblock off on sites I want to support, like p2pnet, independent sites who need them.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:57 am
I too am fed up with the intrusiveness of ads. I no longer watch tv. Since then, I have discovered that my tolerance for the ad has plummeted. It’s to the point that those that want to intrude on my time with what they think is important contrary to my wishes suffer my wrath everytime I go to a store. When I look at a product on the shelf or where ever, one of the first things I consider even before price, is how much of a pest has the ad companies they hired bothered me? I will not consider an item to purchase if it hits me that is one of the ones supporting this type of behavior.
Like the one above, I will not suffer ads on line. I take an active role in seeing to my surfing experience being as clean as possible and ads are nothing but a nuisance. I understand that sites need money to operate and the sources are few between. But ads have totally turned me off. I suspect whenever I see an ad, that there is something wrong with the product because people don’t personally recommend them so they have to pay to have it done for them. That’s not to mention the hidden cost in the price you wind up paying to pay for the cost of those ads that do nothing to improve the product, they only raise the price without giving additional value for the money.
Unlike some people, I react to ads in a totally different way than they desire. To say it nicely, I despise ads and those that feel it has to be force fed to you. When I buy, I think back of just whom was the pain in the behind and it is a predominate determiner in what I will purchase or not consider.
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 am
The divine combination of Firefox+AdblockPlus is a must for serious surfers. Ads frequently devour more bandwidth that the rest of the site combined. NoScript is also useful if you find tedium in switching javascript on and off between sites.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
“Google’s revenues, currently at $20 billion a year” Hoo boy, not bad for a search engine!
To those touting ad-block, I find it crap, but if it works for u ok. My tolerance for ads has also diminished, but it still doesn’t work. It could be vastly improved.
#1 improvement would be to allow blocking/unblocking of actual content (including Flash video), not by some trial and error method of choosing one thing at a time in a coded list which works when and if it decides to.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
^^^ Agree totally with your sentiments