Google V/s Bing… The Heat Is On!
On 3rd June 2009, the world watched with peered eyes, whether the latest product from Microsoft’s stable could challenge Google’s search supremacy. While Bing did generate a substantial amount if interest and arouse curiosity, the sheen seems to be wearing off. Bing slipped in October for the first time since its launch. See here
Over the last few months, the two have traded blows in terms in search features. From map integration, translation tools, computational search to social media searches and real time search results! But last week, we saw what could be the beginning of a new Chapter in this battle for search supremacy.
In an interview to Sky News, Rupert Murdoch stated that he wanted to block traffic from sites like Google. He said, “We’d rather have fewer people coming to our Websites, but paying.” This presents a unique opportunity to Bing, which has thus far had limited success in capturing the imagination of content searchers. To stir up the content providers, essentially approaching this war from the other end.
Another significant move from Microsoft came quickly after Bing shed its Beta tag. Pitches were made to top publications across Europe with the intention of weaning them away from the Google camp. It is probably no secret that many are not happy with Google’s “you are either in our index or not in it” policy. Which means that all data/content will be indexed by Google. With this in mind Microsoft is likely to provide financial backing to the development of Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP).
The result would be that search engines will have a restricted or controlled access to content. Thus shifting the balance of power towards the content provider. Publications and Media Houses that house paid content are likely to adopt this. Giving Google two options, drop their policy or drop the sites. If they choose the latter, and Bing picks them up. How many people will tempted to switch to Bing knowing that major content providers would no longer show up with Google?
Any immediate development on this is unlikely. But we know that the battlelines are constantly being drawn and redrawn. It will be very interesting to see how things pan out in the future.
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