Why a Deal With News Corp Would Make Bing the Trader Joe’s of Search

A confession.Sometimes I use Bing.com. Stop looking at me that way. I said I “use” Bing.com. I didn’t say I enjoy it! In fact, I “use” Bing.com when I’m shopping online and want to get the best price. Bing has a pretty cool shopping engine and I can get up to 10% cashback with its cashback program.See? I use Bing.com.The problem is, that use does not result in me using the search engine for any other task. And that is the issue I see with rumors that Bing is willing to pay News Corp (NWS) and other news organizations to provide their content exclusively to the Microsoft (MSFT) search engine. The FT reports:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

OK, so let’s say this deal comes together–which I really doubt–but let’s say it does. What will happen? I, and many others, will know that in order to read an article on the Wall Street Journal, we have to go to Bing.com and not Google (GOOG). We conduct our search, read the article, then decide to keep Bing as our default search engine…go right back to using Google!

While Bing does need to get some exclusives like this, I just don’t see them being enough to fully switch the masses away from Google. If I know that my favorite bread is only available at Trader Joe’s, I’ll occasionally buy my bread there. The rest of the grocery shopping will be done at Harris Teeter…technically by my wife, but you get the idea.

What do you think? Will deals like this convince you to switch to Bing? Forget you–you’re smart–will it convince the average search user to switch?

Comments

[zyzzyva57]

It ain't pretty, but I find myself using

blindsearch.fejus.com/

to get the best results of Bing, the Goog, and Yahoo

2009 Nov 24 09:34 AM

[an american]

sounds like another MS lawsuit to me. a monopoly on the news ... !!!
wtf !!!

2009 Nov 24 09:52 AM

[c smith]

Sounds to me like the "don't be evil" crowd has finally been outed as the modern day NAPSTER (news instead of music) that they are; If AP, News Corp and others can get them to actually pay, more power to them!

2009 Nov 24 02:55 PM