Dare Microsoft Kill Google? (updated)
"Say, that's a nice ad business you got there. It'd be a real shame if something were to happen to it..."
Sneak peek of IE7 Dialog
Ok, so I Photoshopped this. But, when Microsoft decides that it doesn't want Google's revenue stream as much as it wants Google gone, why wouldn't it do this? And what's wrong with helping consumers filter out unwanted content on the Internet?
Update - I've created a monster. Abhishek ran off and wrote a Firefox extension to do this. Then again, Customize Google has been around for a while. Actually, this is hitting Mozilla, not Google. You know the Firefox default home page with Google search inside? Well, rumor has it that all of the ad revenue from it goes to the Mozilla foundation - that's over a billion dollars to fund their fight against IE 7!
Update 2 - IE 7 breaks Adsense! (Hat tip to Ram).
StartupBoy
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... as imagined by Naval Ravikant: Made me smile, anyway. (Via Munjal Shah)...
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I work at Microsoft now, Naval - stumbled upon your blog following a link from Munjal's blog. Been a long time since we connected and it's great to see u blogging!
Cheers and best wishes.
This is not true - there is a "cost" to any search of time and mental effort, which users give to Google, and Google resells to advertisers.
If that "cost" becomes too high, users can withhold that or go elsewhere - and Google's revenues will drop.
One wonders, why hasn't Microsoft done this already?
For that matter, why isn't there such a default in Firefox? Or Safari?
The option is built into Camino (like Firefox, and distributed by Mozilla, but OS X specific) but it's not turned on by default.
That's exactly the reason why they work, and why people click on them. The common man will not check the box above, as that will mean he will totally miss out on all the ads (for all his searches).
After all, why would I need unsolicited ads after all, be it from Google, MSN search or Yahoo
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-JOxIXmQjfqfLj8YvrOwtzuL97Q--?p=126
-Abhishek
abhishek.goyal@gmail.com
---- Nir Dhar...
(VP/GM for n Software Product Startups.... )
If there is a revenue cut for firefox when someone uses firefox for browsing and clicks on an ad. Then this is really a terrible thing to do. I do know google as well as yahoo are openly supporting firefox. In US, firefox has default search engine as google and in south east asia, yahoo is the default. I will try and dig out information about this from insiders :).
By the way, today i added support to remove adsense ads from third party websites. version 1.1 should be approved sometime soon.
I don't hate google as such, it's just the coolness of idea :). If it turns out that its hurting firefox, we should pull it off.
By Ed Oswald, BetaNews
February 8, 2006, 11:53 AM
Developers testing out the latest version of Internet Explorer 7 are discovering a nasty flaw -- the browser seems to be incompatible with Google's AdSense advertising service. Although the problem seems limited to those running IE7 Beta under Windows XP, it still has some developers worried. For many, AdSense has become the de facto method for generating revenue for their sites. Google generates over $2 billion in revenue yearly from the program alone.
"Considering that by the end of the year, IE7 should be available for almost all versions of Windows, unless Microsoft wants to face the ire of developers everywhere, it had better fix this," Nathan Weinberg of the InsideGoogle Web log wrote Wednesday. Although it is unknown as to why this is occurring, it is suspected it may have to do with how IE7 now handles JavaScript. Microsoft could not be reached for comment.