Posted 11/13/09 at 02:51:10 PM by Bart Salisbury

The pay-to-play debate for online media content heated up a bit with the announcement by News Corp. that Rupert Murdoch was reading to pull the plug on Google’s access to its online content. Jonathan Miller, the chief digital officer of News Corp. told the Monaco Media Forum “We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognized online so something needs to happen.” That something, according to Miller, will not happen right away, but in “months or quarters.”

Murdoch has long made it known that he deserves compensation for the content he provides online, and is actively pursuing ways to generate revenue more directly than advertising. The Wall Street Journal, for example, requires paid subscription for full access (although there are ways around this). However, the online market hasn’t been kind to those who put up such barriers. Apparently Murdoch believes that a leader is needed to make the first bold move, after which others will follow. “We will lead. There is a pent up need for this,” said Miller. There is also a pent up need for News Corp. to get its hands on a bit of the advertising revenue Google’s search engines generate, and which News Corp doesn’t share in.

Miller was dismissive of Google’s importance, at least for the News Corp.: “The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

Google’s response was as expected: “Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't.”

Whether News Corp can survive without Google is a question only pulling the plug will answer. It remains to be seen if News Corp. will follow through on their threat.

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Posted 09/22/09 at 06:16:01 PM by Jason Barry

In what some might see as an irrelevant move in the search genre, Yahoo upgraded its search capabilities and deployed them to most of the world. They announced today on the Yahoo Search blog a slew of new features and a slick new layout for their search engine.

One key feature of the upgrade lives in the additional left column where “intelligent search results” help you to explore other relevant sites and drill-down your result set based on popular keywords. Yahoo implemented “SearchScan,” which helps protect from viruses, malware and spam. They also boasted that they have increased response and search times all over the site. You can find a full listing in detail of the upgrade deployment on the Yahoo search blog.

This might be too little too late as the justice department is inspecting an agreement to shift most Yahoo search efforts over to Microsoft. The upgrades bear striking resemblance to Bing’s results pages, perhaps this is a transitional effort.

How relevant do you think Yahoo is in the internet search industry? What do you think of Yahoo’s improvements?

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Posted 09/16/09 at 08:43:46 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Google made a bit of a surprising move recently by openly stating it wanted to hire away Yahoo search engineers. Google’s senior search blogger, Matt Cutts, said, “If you’re an excellent Yahoo engineer with solid experience in search, Google is hiring.”

The search giant may feel able to snatch skittish talent from Yahoo as the Microsoft deal closes. Microsoft has agreed to take on 400 Yahoo employees, but no assurances have been made beyond that. Given the uncertainty, many may be willing to jump ship for Google.

Ask.com has also been going after these employees. At a recent expo, Ask called out Yahoo employees with a banner reading, “My company just gave up on search. Where do I work now?”

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Posted 08/06/09 at 01:30:59 PM by Paul Lilly

Two weeks ago to the day, Microsoft kicked off a contest inviting participants to sing a jingle about Bing with the stipulation that videos could be no longer than 5 minutes long. It did not stipulate that videos couldn't suck, which doesn't matter anyway, unless the winning entry truly was the best submission Microsoft received.

Jonathan Mann, known on YouTube as "The Rock Cookie Bottom," will receive $500 for winning the Bing Jingle contest, and everyone who watches it gets to die a little inside.

"His concept from the beginning was to have fun and make it a bit silly," Microsoft wrote on its Bing Community blog. "He thought the idea of searching for "Learn how to dance like Jonathan" while dancing in the foreground would be pretty hilarious. And lucky for us it was both catchy and funny! Jonathan's Bing jingle was his 202nd song."

View the winning submission here, and if you like it, we suggest also watching this and this.

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Posted 06/29/09 at 09:25:48 AM by Paul Lilly

What does a search engine have to do in order to pry users away from Google? We're not sure, but maybe more people will come if they think there will be punch and pie. Building a better (arguably) search engine isn't enough, according to a new study.

In a small case study, Catalyst Group found that users preferred the design and feature-set of Microsoft's Bing over that of Google. However, those same users said they would stick with Google, citing similar search results and familiarity with the search engine's Web services as reasons why.

"Bing generates interests, but it's hard to take me away from Google because I'm so comfortable with it," the subjects who chose Google told Catalyst researchers. "The differences are very small. They're too small for me to switch to Bing."

It should also be noted that the case study only including 12 participants.

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Posted 06/08/09 at 02:55:17 PM by Paul Lilly

As expected, Bing, Microsoft's search decision engine, shot up the charts following its public debut and quickly became the No. 2 search engine behind Google. But before Microsoft could pop the champagne on what looked to be a stellar start, Bing bounced out of second place just one day later, conceding the No. 2 spot back to Yahoo.

More specifically, Bing claimed 15 percent of the U.S. search market on June 4th compared to Yahoo's 10 percent. But on June 5th, Microsoft's decision engine fell to 10 percent while Yahoo rose to just shy of 11 percent, enough to put it back in second place. As of yesterday, Bing had fallen to 6.68 percent while Yahoo rose to 11.33 percent, nearly a 5 percent difference between the two.

Bing continues to fall, checking in at 5.65 percent so far today. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can reverse the downward trend now that the initial excitement has worn off, and justify spending between $80-$100 million advertising its decision engine.

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Posted 05/26/09 at 03:45:23 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Ready, aim, SPEND! That's the approach Microsoft is planning for Bing, its new search engine, Advertising Age reports. How much coin is Redmond prepared to spend to market Bing (previously code-named Kumo)? Somewhere is the $80-100 million range, Ad Age says, compared to Google's non-recruitment ad spending in 2008 of around $13 million. But, can spending 6-8 times as much as Google give Bing the jump it needs?

Microsoft's ad push (helmed by ad-agency powerhouse JWT) will not, unlike the recent anti-Apple campaign, mention Microsoft's search rivals - instead, the planned ads will ask consumers if search works as well as they'd like.

How about the product itself?

People who've seen the Microsoft product suggest it's useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it's not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).

When will Bing shove aside Live Search? The Register says "June," and also suggests keeping an eye on the D: All Things Digital conference this week for more details.

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Posted 05/22/09 at 04:30:43 PM by Andy Salisbury

It’s expected that Microsoft’s search engine rebrand will soon make its official debut.

The official announcement for Kumo is expected to come at the D: All Things Digital Conference next week, where CEO Steve Ballmer is currently scheduled to appear onstage.

With the rebranding Microsoft hopes to gain a new foothold in the search engine market that they currently only have an 8.2 percent market share in. They’ve got some pretty stiff competition as well, considering that Google’s search engine market share is a whopping 64.2 percent.

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