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Mark Cuban's Plan To Kill Google
rsmiller510 writes "Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has a plan to kill Google by paying the top 1,000 sites a cool million each to leave the Google index and move to Microsoft. But could such a plan ever work, and would it be worth the risk to abandon Google?"
I know bribery is accepted practice in the US but here in the EU it is still frowned upon.
-- Cheers!
Is it worth $1 million to leave Google? I'm guessing most of the sites would say no, that's incredibly short sighted.
I'll give the top 1000 folks on slashdot who eat bread a nickel never to eat it again.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
They are surely a top-1000 site. Will they get the cash to de-list themselves?
P.S. The guy is an idiot. People go to Google not to get stuff from a top-1000 site, but to find stuff that is not found in the search bars of the top-1000 sites.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
What TFA is short on is any sense of motivation on Mark Cuban's part. Why does he want to do this? Did Google frighten him when he was a baby?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
it involves a piece of furniture and some kinetic energy. As effective as spitting in the wind.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
This is just stupid unless any of these sites are going downhill already. Opting out of Google would just ensure it.
The top 1000 clients of google likely piss away a million $ a day in coffee alone.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Does the dude have stock at Microsoft? Or what's it to him?
1 million is peanuts. Amazon, one of the top 100 sites, makes that during a coffee break.
Why opt out of free product placement (Amazon usually ranks high in google) worldwide, for a pittance?
Cuban's mojo has left the room.
Problem solved. Or, just link to "top 1000 dunderheads who tried hiding" off the Google home page.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
At this point, I don't see what's in it for Mark Cuban except nearly half of his net worth, and probably more in legal fees once google sues. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
Even if the "top 1000" sites accepted the bribe, that wouldn't make much of a dent. How small does this pilgrim think the internet is?
And what's to stop Google from re-indexing them?
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
For the top 1000, a million bucks is not a lot of money. Why risk alienating the population for what is to them a drop in the bucket?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The phrase tortious interference comes to mind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference)
you better make sure you have that million safely in your account before your company goes belly up.
Seems like Google could index the top 1000 sites whether they wanted Google to index them or not.
I don't see how they could possibly stop Google from indexing information that these sites put into public view.
-PM
This won't affect me. I don't search for advertisers. In fact, getting rid of the paid cruft will make searching for true results even better. Besides, a billion dollars is starting to fade into the noise of google's net worth. It may hurt Google, but it won't kill Google.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
So basically google would be listing 1000 less pr0n sites?
Yes, someone really should have a stern talking to of the CEO of Microsoft, Mark Cuban. ~
In all seriousness, can you please abandon your Slashdot ID and not post here again? And also, please leave the internet.
Thanks.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...and I think the top 1,000 sites would easily calculate that their losses in ad revenue and web traffic would be worth more than $1,000,000.
It's bidness. You don't wanna interfere in bidness do ya? You some kinda socialist or somethin'?
Best Slashdot Co
This is simple, complete rubbish, spoken by a fool. One million dollars would be nowhere near enough for any profitable site to take itself off the world's biggest search engine, effectively killing future growth.
Also, assuming these sites aren't in competition with google directly, and most websites aren't, why would they care about trying to knock down Google, for a trivial sum?
That's it, today is the day I give up on slashdot. Bye.
You mean, it doesn't involve chair throwing!?
Wow what a testament to Google. Mark Cuban is basically saying that nobody has a product that could even hope of competing with Google and the only way to conceivably take them down is to bribe their clients with gobs of money.
So, is he offering this out of his own pocket? (a billion dollars).
Or is this just a hare-brained idea that he is tossing out there to get some spin on his own name.
Let's see the Dallas Mavericks remove themselves from anything Google first. Oh, that's right, he must have already, never heard of the team before...
Tisha Hayes
that some form Microsoft is telling Mark Cuban to "totally fucking kill" Google. Maybe Mark Cuban is chair averse...
"Ones and zeros were everywhere. I even think I saw a two!" - Bender
Perhaps they could develop something better than Google, and attract customers that way. Just a thought.
Really? Spending one BILLION/MILLIARD dollars for what is essentially an advertising campaign? Sounds pretty risky to me. If you have that kind of money to gamble with, why not spend that money on actually building a better search engine?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Any site that considers it worth the moeny to leave Google isn't worth the ad revenue for MS and poses little threat to Google. It'll serve to slightly flatten out the income curve and distribute wealth from the people who came up with this horrible idea to those who were smart enough to benefit from that idea.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I don't think there's any law out there that says you must not index a site if they ask you not to. It's more of a request then a requirement. If information is public, and legally available to Microsoft, it would, I believe also be legally available to Google (unless the indexing was licenced in some way, but I don't think there's been any precedent for that). So all Google has to do is ignore the 1000 sites and just index them anyways. Problem solved.
How about taking that $1,000,000,000 and throw it at R&D or buy the hardware to offer a service people actually want instead of just trying to buy customers. If you need to pay your customers to use your services then your services don't offer anything of value.
So you (a typical user) go looking for something, and the "top 1000 sites" don't happen to turn up in your searches. Of course somebody still highly relevant will still turn up, so you end up finding what you want.
What did you lose? Nothing. Well, nothing except for a web page where the publisher took money in exchange for not being found -- in other words, a page you couldn't trust anyway.
Do you care? Somehow, I think not.
I don't see how this kind of move "kills" Google. The only one it "kills" is the billion dollar ($1M x 1000) giver. They're paying a billion dollars to the top 1000 sites in order to improve sites 1001-2000 search rankings. Cuban loses and sites 1-2000 win to varying degrees adding up to $1B total.
Mark Cuban: Here's the plan. We get the top 1000 sites on our side and we hold google ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Number Two: Don't you think we should hand out *more* than a million dollars? A million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. The top number 1 site, yahoo, alone makes almost 8 billion dollars a year!
Mark Cuban: Really? That's a lot of money.
[pause]
Mark Cuban: Okay then, we'll hold google ransom for...
Mark Cuban: One... Hundred... BILLION DOLLARS!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I search with Google. If a site is not in that index, Oh well....
I guess I should file this under Mark Cuban's plan to defeat Barack Obama, Mark Cuban's plan to dominate basketball, Mark Cuban's plan to dominate HD television content, and Mark Cuban's plan to destroy theatrical motion picture distribution.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
If the top 1000 sites left google...would anyone notice? the answer is yes..the next 1000 that would replace them..and my guess is there are a couple that would stay in the top 1000 after getting the exposure even if the others came back.
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
From wikipedia: "In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas. Cuban first found work as a bartender,[13][14] then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the first PC software retailers in Dallas. He was terminated less than a year later, after meeting with a client to procure new business instead of opening the store.
Cuban started a company, MicroSolutions, with support from his previous customers from Your Business Software. MicroSolutions was initially a system integrator and software reseller. The company was an early proponent of technologies such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe.[15] One of the company's largest clients was Perot Systems.[16] In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe--then a subsidiary of H&R Block--for $6 million.[17] He retained approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.[18]
In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alumnus Todd Wagner started Audionet, combining their mutual interest in college basketball and webcasting. With a single server and ISDN line[19], Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999, Broadcast.com had grown to 330 employees and $13.5 million in revenue for the second quarter.[20] In 1999, during the Dot-com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock.[21]"
This man is not a business genius. He is a good self-promoter, and has leveraged this to making a lot of money. Re-read the last couple sentences. he had a business with 13.5 million in revenue in 3 months (not profit... with 330 employees, it was much, much lower). He then sold it for likely a 500+ P/E ratio.
The tech stock market bubble made this man. I don't disparage him for that. However, any business advice coming from this man is virtually worthless. Self-promotion... he's up there.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I'd imagine a robots.txt file would work nicely if they wished to commit search-engine sepuku in such a way.
But heck, killing off some of the "top 1000" sites might improve my google experience. With no eBay links every time my search possibly evaluates to a product, or "experience exchange" every time I google a semi-technical query, it would actually be an improvement for me.
If it works half as well as his quest to bring an NBA championship to Dallas, Google better watch out!
That top 1000 would include:
All of whom would see an immediate drop in revenues if google stopped indexing them, and some of which are actually google owned.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
I'm sorry guys, better spend that $1b on copying Google's technology and then keep it running without Google's Achilles tendon: just say no to collecting personal information and you'll win in the long run.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
registered a domain name, snowed some clueless investors with a generic, vague pie in the sky technology idea that would never realize light of day, then timed it perfectly to leave with a pile of cash before the shit hit the fan
for doing that, he is laudable, in some fashion
he's a good businessman at best, a con artist at worst, but why whatever that man thinks should have any respect in this forum is beyond me. "News for Nerds" automatically excludes anything mark cuban thinks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
TFA makes it pretty clear that this (on his personal blog) is a thought experiment, not an actual plan he has any intention to follow through. More, he is speculating about moves that Microsoft or others might take to bring Google down and what that would do to the market.
Frankly, it as much use as mine our your random musings on business: the only motivation for it making the Slashdot front page seems to be that this guy coincidentally happens to have a billion dollars.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
Drop off Google, and you cease to exist as far as a very large percentage of the average Internet users are concerned.
I doubt any company in Google's top 1000 is worth so little that its worth $1m cash to shut their business down.
That said, if Mark Cuban is reading this, I'll gladly remove my sites from Google for $1m.
$1M isn't peanuts to everybody. The regular public can't see Google's site rankings, but assuming they're similar to the Alexa rankings, there are some sites that would probably jump at a million dollars. The porn sites, a lot of the bloggers, and some of the shakier social networking sites would probably take the money and run.
But there's something else odd about that list. Many of the top-ranked sites -- 3 of the first 20, for example -- are Microsoft. Again, that's not Google's ranking page, but MS sites are still findable via Google. If MS plans to 'kill' Google, shouldn't they start by taking their own sites off that search engine first?
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I am no lawyer or DA but it sounds to me like the Judges will be warming up the bench for this one.. Sounds like a whole slew of laws would be broken. The ethics of it alone are just bad and if Microsoft was involved in something like this it would be the preverbial straw that broke the camels back. If Digital Rights Mismanagement and Windows Genuine Disadvantage are not enough to bring this company down as it is, I can see this at the very least as a very good Linux magnet. People want choice, do not want to be controlled, and do not want to nor need to be shepherded like sheep. Google is where it is because it works and is easy and when you go to Google it is a simple web page with no insidious graphics, or java scripts or crap. It is just a simple box the indexes the information in the tubes. If the Internet were a truck that you dump something on then it would be more likely that Microsoft would prevail as they tend to dump things on us that we don't like regardless, but since it is a series of tubes Google is much better for tube searching.
http://www.techagreements.com/agreement-preview.aspx?num=441
It's official, Cuban has lost it. Does he really think that $1M will persuade any of the big players? Heck, even Wikimedia (sixth in Alexa rankings) is not trying to make a profit, would only meet 12% of its operational expenses with a free million. Does he really think Amazon or Ebay would let go one of their major revenue streams? That said, maybe Windows Live (5th in Alexa) wouldn't mind the extra million...
I'm puzzled by all the attention paid to that guy. From what I can see, the dude's a serial hustler who got lucky once (and big time) during dot-bomb bubble, and have been milking it ever since. At least other douches like Marc Andressen actually developed something of great signficance. What exactly has Cuban brought to the table?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The real Cuban article is in his blog. Is not like he did a legal proposal, listed the top 1k sites and offered them that money. Was doing a bit of math, and the rtfa took it out of context or proportion.
Perhaps I'm just not running the right Firefox plugin (AdBlock, FlashBlock, etc.), but that in-your-face popup ad for a service I will actively avoid in retaliation for the ad itself is quite annoying. Does anyone know how to kill this thing?
As for the article, what does MC have against MS? I don't like MS, but I'm sure they'd have to do something to me personally before I'd be willing to spend $1 billion to prove it.
Xesdeeni
You know, because 10 minutes after they left the Google index, they're not top-1000 sites anymore.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Being lucky one time at the top of the tech bubble may make you rich, but if you do nothing else like Cuban has you are nothing but a lucky blowhard.
I think the text of this article determined my Google ad on the main page: an upcoming interview with Sarah Palin.
I don't know what his motivation is, other than to generate controversy and be a twit, but he's obviously full of shit - he's not even doing it himself. Do a google search for "Mark Cuban" and the third result is his own blog. If he's not even willing to do it, why would anyone else, even for the paltry amount of $1 million? Smoke and mirrors. I'm just curious why.
Why are the comments of the owner of what I assume is some kind of sports team of any interest? Is this person well know in American technology circles?
Can you imagine how bad you'd feel if you were site 1001 and had just kissed $1m goodbye?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
hmm.. maybe CNN was a bad example given their current network ratings
it involves a piece of furniture and some kinetic energy. As effective as spitting in the wind.
Yeah, laugh it up now, smart guy. You won't be laughing tomorrow when Microsoft unveils their MyFurnitureRailgun 2010 For Windows Live.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
On the other hand, for loser websites ranked 987th, it might be interesting, but would them off Google make any difference? Hell no it won't. Nobody would ever notice, except maybe the webmaster.
I think you're severely underestimating the size of the sites in the top 1000.
I'm not sure how accurate this ranking is (and it cuts off at 973, for some reason), but the bottom 100 there include sites like Target, Best Buy, Delta Airlines, Air France, and the New York Post - large retailers, airlines with high traffic, and big newspapers. I don't think any of those sites would accept the money to be removed from the listings - even at that level, it's still not worth it.
Goo goo g'joob.
Woohoo let's kill Google so that Microsoft can rule the world even more. Why didn't I think of that...
Not to mention that like many others mentioned, the top 1000 sites (some which are owned by Google, like maps, orkut, gmail, etc.) piss away $1 million a week.
I have to say, if the top 1000 sites were stupid enough to go along with this, then I'd be pretty damn happy if I was site #1001.
Even if the top 2 or 3 book selling sites are all in the top 1000 sites (and go along with this), then what is the more likely scenario:
* Everyone says "Oh crap, I can't find the book I'm looking for on [insert favourite site here], I don't know what this [insert #4 bookseller here] site is, so I'm going to go another search engine"
* People buy from the first link, and #4 bookseller very quickly jumps to #1
Repeat across every industry. Even if the first scenario happens in some, it won't in all of them.
Another take on this: how often, when you search for a business/whatever and can't find it, even after trying a couple variations, do you go to another search engine? For me, it's never. I just assume they don't have a website. I imagine I'm not the only one.
Speak before you think
Cuban's proposal tells me a lot about his confidence in MS' ability to build a better search engine. Evidently, he think MS is either not up to the task OR it will cost more than $1B to do it. Buying customers is for losers who can't get them via conventional means, much as a man might use a prostitute when he can't score any other way. My guess is that Cuban got the idea from watching Ballmer at a singles bar.
I think Cuban just stole Jason Calcanus idea.
... the real threat to Google is Murdoch trying to get the rest of the publishing/content world to threaten lack of access to Google unless they pay them.
And if they don't? They will allow Bing! to index their sites (after being paid a hefty fee by Microsoft).
This is actually pretty smart in a number of ways. It changes the balance of power from the search engines to the content providers. "Pay us or you won't be allowed to search our sites". Not only does it help Murdoch get his content paid for but he's running to the correct knight (in black evil armor) to rescue him, Microsoft. What's the one thing that Microsoft still has that Google can't compete with? Cash, Microsoft CAN BUY ITS WAY to the top of the search engine heap. THAT'S how Google can be killed. (I wonder if anti-trust laws will prevent Murdoch from explicitly organizing against Google).
I wish I could say I thought this on my own but I read it on TechCrunch. (No I'm not affiliated with them in any way). P.S. While we're on the subject with Murdoch, even before he gets into bed with M$, what the F*** is he, a FOREIGNER (sorry Aussies) screwing up the media in our (U.S.) country? Aren't there laws against foreign interests owning critical national assets? And he's so blatantly trying to force his right wing viewpoints down our throats!
This scheme will work as well as his basketball team....
The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $1 Billion Dollars.
Correct me if I'm wrong. But wouldn't $1000 for 100k sites be $100M? Unless it's that weird thousand/million/millard that the British use.
now i don't know if alexa is the best source but it's what google gave me first... searching for slashdot showed it ranks 1,305... ...Nobody would ever notice, except maybe the webmaster???
... but if he's going to just throw a billion dollars away, why doesn't he do something decent with it like feed the poor or cure a disease or give computers to schools or fund music programs?
Or start a new business to help America get its shit together and beat this recession?
It's a plan to kill every site that takes the bait.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Microsoft also included some kind of Cash back scheme to woo sites away from google and into bing!. So it is not anything new. It has not worked so far. But if they throw a billion dollars at it, who knows what would happen.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Does this Cuban have shares in MICROS~1
davecb5620@gmail.com
History has already demonstrated how Microsoft reacts when they are fully in control of technology. How do you think they would act if they are in control of vital Internet search results? Do you think they would serve the interests of the general public or their own pecuniary interests? Do you think they would stilfe search results that are critical of Microsoft or promote true free speech? Do you think if they were the dominant search engine they would use it to leverage themselves unfairly into other markets or compete fairly?
I don't need to answer these questions; as I already said history has shown us what they are willing to do. I think we the users have the final say though. I use Google and Yahoo! and have found that bing results, while typically fair aren't necessarily much better. As a matter of preference I have no reason to switch from Google, et al, and won't, even if the top 1,000 top-dogs switch to Microsoft. If that happens they lost me, I didn't lose them.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
China is big enough to fund a Google-killer.
Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore T.
Couldn't Google just rewrite their bots to not broadcast Googlebot as the useragent? Fake it as Firefox or something. I'm sure something similar to this has been argued in court but can a website on the open internet now allow itself to be indexed?
I know bribery is accepted practice in the US but here in the EU it is still frowned upon.
Resorting to bribery would signal that Google competitors have given up on competing by creating a better product and instead have to resort to simply paying users to make the switch. It's like being asked to drop your supermodel girlfriend for a bag lady in exchange for a suitcase full of cash.
Before Microsoft tries to take over from the most successful search engine in the world they really need to get a better name. Can you really imagine youself using "bing" as a verb in mixed company?
The person who came up with that name must be the same one who thought it was a good idea to sell devices that allow you to "squirt" pictures of your kids.
Two problems: for many of the larger sites, one million USD is just not that much money. Bought loyalty is very fickle.
Second, while it escaped punishment, Microsoft is still a adjudged (conviced) monopolist. It has to be careful how it does all business dealings, especially any that might be seen as extending its monopoly. This move would be very clearly anti-competitive, and even though it is not dominant in the search market, it is in the nearby browser market. One of these days, MS will slip and they'll go the way of Standard Oil.
Your post reminds me of many people who love the Springsteen song "Born in the U.S.A." thinking the song is super-patriotic.
Seriously, the USERS decide which search engine is best, not the website owners
1. Implicit in your platitude is the notion that people are willing to change the minute something better comes along. They are not unless forced by some overwhelming need. The history of computers is loaded with better products and ideas that failed because people were unwilling to change.
2. Marketing is all of what is driving what consumption choices you haven't already made. Mysteriously, companies who shout the loudest tend to have the largest consumer market share. I bring that up because your mythic USER has a brand ladder for everything where there is the slightest hint of discriminating preferences and therefore do not relish choices.
You are not as free as you think you are.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
What a dumb idea.
There are ways in which Google is vulnerable, but that isn't one of them.
Google's real vulnerability is that if organic search is good enough, nobody ever need click on the ads. When organic search takes you to the right place on the first try, Google makes no money. So the organic search results have to suck, just a little, to make the ads look more attractive. Google needs for some of the traffic to go to ad-heavy pages. That's how Google gets much of their revenue. That's where they're vulnerable.
Google advertisers are about 36% "bottom-feeders", sites that don't have an identifiable, real-world business behind them. Most of those are ad sites.
Somebody check my match, but in the actual blog, he says:
The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars.
1,000 x 100,000 = 100,000,000 - One Hundred MILLION, not one BILLION.
But, anyway, it seems to me to be only a gedanken experiment, not an actual proposal. He must have been chillin' in front of one of his HDTVs watching a really boring movie.
I wonder if they will give themselves $1 million to take their own team off Google.
/me SLAPS Mark Cuban with a giant trout!
Wow! Look who the first result is for!?!? Mark Cuban's teams website! Shame Shame!!
http://tinyurl.com/yefvopu
Maybe it's not a bad idea after all, if he can get every website off google except his own, then then no matter what you search for, Google will only return the Mavs website as a result!!
Most of the top 1000 sites are in the top 1000 because they're indexed by Google. In other words, if 1001-2000 suddenly become 1-1000, very few people will even notice the difference.
If Wikipedia results disappeared from Google, I'd start using a different search engine. Cuban *only* needs to figure out how much money to give to Jimmy Wales and a technical way to take Wikipedia off the Google search results and he'll have gone and done major damage to Google.
taking the top thousand, Mark. users will determine the pace of it, ultimately not business. its as profound as saying "im going to ruin slashdot by taking the top 1000 posters and advertisers!"
if google didnt have a "do no evil" clause, id suggest an app to identify, ostracise, and deter Mark from ever using google or google resources in the future. Perhaps this would put into perspective just how reliant he is on their financial interface, their API, and their apps which are used in another million other sites.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I think it's kind of interesting that in this economy that so many people here in slashdotville find it easy to say just how little a million dollars is.
........"
"A million dollars. Shucks, that ain't nothing. I once
It must make you feel rich to dismiss a million dollars as trivial. Just an observation.
That's it, 4chan. Take the cash and run while you can.
Or is Cuban getting crazier and crazier with each passing year?
I used to have huge respect for him, but everything he says in public nowadays makes him look like a moron. This comment included. Not to mention there is no reason mentioned why Cuban wants to kill Google in the first place, I don't see how they compete with any of his businesses.
Sorry but clearly he thinks more of his opinion than he should. Money doesn't make you smart, especially if you're from Texas.
Last I heard there was a pirate ship taking on water off the coast of Sweden.
A million represents a sizeable portion of their fine and it's not like they take a hit for leaving Google in the wake of the other problems they face.
Of course, that's assuming they're indexed in the top 1000. I'm far too lazy to see if their Alexa rank translates accordingly.
For all the sites actually looking to do business, it's not worth the time to point out the shortcomings of his offer.
or does the article seem poorly written due to an unclear idea? I understand the premise.. the whole thing just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Every time I see one of these nonsensical (referring to the content itself) I get the impression that it's some sort of run on quick advertising income. Make up something (anything) that would get a lot of notice and profit.
Good Luck with that...
Ask Lockheed.
What I find funny is the pay-per-click fraud on the site's page: "Please support our Pay-Per-Click Advertising advertiser: Get a Free Web Marketing Analysis!"
But paying people money to switch indexes is not a bribe.
Yeah if I were one of those top sites or even Microsoft, I would want Mark giving me advise.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2007/08/markcubandancing.jpg
Thanks, but errr no thanks.
Take care,
Joe
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
I hope Google goes bankrupt. Microsoft is hardly a good alternative though. startpage or scroogle are more my style. :D
Here's to the downfall of ALL the major tech monopolies! Bye bye!
But could such a plan ever work?
No. You can't voluntarily leave the Google Index. And being found by Googlers is worth more than 1 Million Dollars to these companies. Now, paying a million so your biggest competitor isn't in the Google Index? That would be worth a million.
Simple question, simple answer. Next clueless rich idiot, please!
I always said you'd have to pay me to use Bing. How about bribing 1 million heavy users with $1000 to switch and evangalize about it? That's one epic astroturf right there.
Nice to know our richest people fail at finding uses for their spare cash that actually benefit the human civilization.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Any business strategy that boils down to "kill off competitor X" is fundamentally unsound in this type of open market. Michael Wolff, in his recent Vanity Fair article on Rupert Murdoch's troubles succeeding on the internet, stated the issue well:
To view any of Google's markets as zero-sum is fundamentally myopic, and plays to Google's advantage. Any competitor is better served identifying something that Google doesn't do well for the customer, and focusing on that instead of taking market share away from Google. Of course, this requires real work and innovation.
Looking at Mark Cuban's robots.txt file ( http://blogmaverick.com/robots.txt ), I see that he's not blocking Googlebot. Therefore, he is listed in Google's index. So why should someone take $1 million from him to leave the Google index when he clearly does not want to leave Google's index himself?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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Murdoch keeps dissing Google and claims that he no longer wants to be indexed by them. I would really love to see Google and IDEALLY Yahoo as well as AOL pull all of Murdoch's sites out. Then watch how things change on the web without Google, and hopefully another search engine or two to push their garbage.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If MS plans to 'kill' Google, shouldn't they start by taking their own sites off that search engine first?
Then no-one would be able to write programs for windows because they would never be able to search MSDN and actually find the documentation for the billion or so windows functions.
I'm the kind of person who:
1) Is familiar enough with my top sites to know which search engine they can't be found on.
2) Never uses bookmarks.
3) Is not familiar enough with my top sites to remember the address.
Oh yeah, I don't know if this means anything but...
4) I Google "bing" to find bing.com
Maybe a better analysis:
Mark Cuban was sitting around one day smoking something and wondered, "How can I prove that I am really, really stupid?"
Oh, I know. Wow! I've got it. Microsoft could pay a billion dollars to prove to everyone that it can't compete, that it has to pay to get results. Why the advertising alone would be worth 50 billion. Everyone would associate Microsoft with puking.
If Google pays them a $million to come back, then it's certainly worth it.
--
make install -not war
I know many people that even type "yahoo" on google just to get their mail. Guess what they will say when the get no results?
a) Google sucks.
b) Yahoo is broken.
MWAHAA! Forget the LHC, move over 2012. I am going to destroy the earth by creating a paradox that sucks up the entire internet and moves us back to the stone ages of about two decades ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Note that the list was compiled almost seven years ago, quite a bit has changed.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
so it will mean that a 1,000 porn sites will move to bing?
After all, Al Gore is solely responsible for creating the internet.
and on what grounds ?
because it contained key truth in it ?
because there arent 'lobby' coprorations whose job is to BRIBE lawmakers to do their leashholders' bidding in usa ?
because, whereas foul play by corporations is AWARDED in usa under the excuse of 'liberalism', eu actually FINES them in europe ?
next time you mod something, mod with your brain. not with your ass.
Read radical news here
Hah! Get back to us when you got a serious offer
Sincerely,
The top 1,000 sites
and never talk in public again. ill give him another $1 M if he promises to never talk again.
Read radical news here
A railgun? That shoots furniture?
"The Blue Sofa of Death" has such a nice ring to it.
Is there an optional attachment that allows me to shoot big, fluffy side pillows (with bowling balls in them)?
One, please.
I promise to search on Bing for all the used couches I will inevitably be in the market for VERY soon...
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The essential message here and a trend I see taking place on websites is not the destruction of google, but the destruction of the internet. What Cuban here is suggesting is not to simply entice sites away from google, but to make them participate in a system that is not democratic and elective, but entirely under the control of one authority.
All the comments above citing the estimation and price being off are symptomatic of the brain freeze that M$ would use to accomplish this. The point is, whether 1 million is correct, that there is a price or probably a single number that could disrupt the top 1000 list. Now from the standpoint of the SEO community and analysis there are potential benefits not only to migrating the list, but also in destroying it completely.
While the things that Cuban suggests are flawed on so many levels, the ignorance contained should be seen as information itself and representing common misperceptions about the internet, free systems and the universe.
The best way I can logically express the problem with using money as an incentive in this case is pushing a string.
While this is not itself an ad for Bing, it implies that Bing would be the next best choice after Google, and this is reflected in responses here. This is also advertizing for Bing itself. For the time being, a number 2 position after google would be quite an accomplishment itself.
I think perhaps the real motivation in the comment is simply to encourage people to imagine an internet without google, and to spread the idea that the internet is just another application or hole through which to pour video garbage and advertizements. Peoples' choice and sites' choice seems to be disregarded.
Cuban and M$ are against free principles and Google was born of the internet.
While Google is not the internet, it is a species that evolved from the conditions of the internet. Paying someone money to leave a system they would otherwise find beneficial should be the biggest insult to any other alternative. If a site removed themselves from the google index, they should do so not because someone offered them a bribe, but because of a better idea or merits.
Perhaps Bin Laden will take Cuban's idea and offer citizens of respective nations the option of 1 million dollars for becoming one of his followers. Well, a place in heaven or the Bin Laden afterlife fantasy might be just as attractive.
The attraction will work for some, and given the balance of irrational fundamentalist thought in the world today among those who have a choice we should not be surprised that such a successful capitalist would speak to the insane than engage the intelligent.
The internet cannot be manipulated and managed like a sports team and the sites are not athletes in your portfolio.
If there is a perception that there should be more than 1 successful rank, then there should be alternatives and maybe there is some monopoly perceived when more choices are desired. I think the intelligent observation here is that if there is a better way than google, it should not take tender to to convince the popular sites. Unless of course it is a complete accident that they find themselves so popular like winning the lottery. Maybe they are so popular because google is playing favorites and helping themselves in the process, instead of reflecting culture at a point in time.
And this is the benefit of understanding inverse advertizing. What Cuban has expressed through inversion is his understanding of google as a manifestation or mapping of his own principles. If he was google, he would play favorites and he would reward his golf buddies and this is expressed through his proposal. Free systems like the internet are always under the attack of the Lenins, Bin Ladens and Cubans of the world. It comes from megalomania and they see it inside everyone and everything around them. The sympathetic break allows these types to operate quite efficiently without the hindrance of others' motivations and feelings. Th
You take the million, fine ... but what about next year? Do you get another million, or was this a one-shot deal, in which case a million is nowhere near enough to permanently remove a top-1000 site.
Plus, what's to stop them from making another site with a similar name, and making the bing link redirect to the new site? New site is now at the top of both, with an extra $1m in their pocket.
(ducks)
Yeah.... throw money at it. It'll work.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Do you honestly believe that to be true? Just asking, because there's a rumour that the goat guy's "giver" is getting lonely.
Wow, this idea is almost as brilliant as bing. Why do people want to punish success? And why help m$? Google may dominate search, but m$ is still bigger, richer, & more powerful, right? Or not?
My company (well not my company, but the one I work for) is a multi-tier retailer, ranked around 8000 by Alexa, and top 5 in it's niche. We are struggling and could use $1M. But there's no way we'd take it to forgo the Google hits. It just wouldn't make any sense, if only for branding reasons.
I found this gem from Mark's original post:
Lovely multiplication work there Mark... He goes on to say,
The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?
First of all, why is this a question? It's your dumb plan, I don't have the answer. It would be like asking "How much manure would you have to fling in people's faces to earn back the cost of buying the manure?" Second of all, everyone's already discussing how idiotic it would be to leave the google index for even $1 million; $500 thousand would even worse. And third,
the remaining 99k split the rest
("the rest" being $500 tousand), so you're saying that you'll get 99,000 sites to leave Google all for just over $5.05 a piece? Let's say I'm the #2 result for the word "shoes" on Google; the #1 result just took their $500 thousand bribe and ran. You really think I'll give up my newly found #1 spot on the most popular search engine for a one time payment of $5.05?
He then goes on to write,
Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each.
So his actual plan to give the top thousand sites $1 million, actually involves more than just $1 billion, because he still plans on paying the next 99,000 sites something to leave as well. If I owned any stock in any company that Mark Cuban is currently working for or on the board of, I would sell it this second.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
My site gets about 10 hits per week. Of course, I have not done anything specific to increase my googleablity but if he gives me a million dollars I'll sell my domain to him he can do what he likes. If he gives me 500k I'll go index my site in bing. shit I'll do it for 100K. No takers? 50 K? going once....
--is their bizarre bias towards relevant results. All I want is whatever results make the most money for billionaires. In fact, don't even show me search results. Just take money from my back account and show me advertisements, please. PLEASE, Mr. Fratboy Douchenozzle Billionaire, I still have money left and they keep giving me more every other week!
The summary is bogus. Cuban speculated on it being done, but did not speculate on who would much less claim he intended to himself.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Let's just look at the top 50 sites to get an idea of the feasibility of this plan, as reported by Alexa.
First, we filter out all of the Google properties. By my count, that leaves 30.
Next, filter out Microsoft's properties, as the scheme would put theme in the antitrust crosshairs: That leaves 26.
Forget Yahoo; they make a lot more than $1MM annually from Google. We're down to 22.
What's left? Forget LinkedIn -- search results are their bread-and-butter. Likewise the IMDb, Craigslist, Twitter, eBay and Myspace. Wikipedia and the BBC would consider it a breach of their charters. Facebook might be tempted, but their users would protest too much. Only 13 out of 50 remain. Of these, which would play ball? RapidShare would -- they're rather be ignored by search traffic. The Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Turkish social networking sites might. Likewise the porn sites. In truth though, we have only five or six "maybes" in the top 50.
Bottom line, it's an absurd notion -- more old media fantasies of crippling the internet with blunt 19th century methods. I'm not saying that Google is unassailable, but a challenge by a competitor who hasn't put in the sweat-equity is a guaranteed to failure.
And good riddance!
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
Okay, so first, in order to make this work you'd have to outspend Google. I mean, for Microsoft and pals (you know, anybody who can afford to spend a billion+ dollars to topple Google), search is a nice business that they want; but for Google it's their core business (well, it's what powers their core business). You'd need someone else willing to bet their company (or someone who dwarfs Google, maybe GE or BP wants a search engine really bad?), because the stakes will be that high for Google. At the first sign of a strategy like this working, Google simply shows up with a bigger check. You think it would be easy for people to lure Google away with a million dollar check? How easy would it be to convince them to stay with a two million dollar check?
Second, Google has lobbying muscle now. Assuming this is legal, it might not be soon. They'll probably outlaw it in an amendment to the next Puppies for Orphanages Act that comes through. "It's not Evil, it's Democracy!"
This strategy would have worked great before the IPO.
Game... blouses.
Google can just pay them a $million each to come back. Or $1.5 million. Google's a lot richer than Mark Cuban is.
--
make install -not war
It is set as my home page so I can see their cool new picture every day. They're really good. But for searches I just click on that google search bar in the upper right hand corner
Who is Mark Cuban? I cannot seem to find him via Google...
What a dolt...
I think he meant the top 1000 Cuban web sites
I think there's something I don't understand. To have results you have to do a search first. I have several websites that come in the top 1000 list depending on the search word I use.
Where are my millions, Mr. Cuban?
Aside from being a plan or not the exercise is a bit cool - I mean the exercise of the effects if someone does it. I wonder what would happen with the position 1001+ over the google left overs..
makes me sad to say I live in the same state he does.
-- whatchulookinherefor?
This isn't about Cuban paying. it is about MSFT paying sites to be "exclusive" to bing. Calacanis and Cuban have been developing this thought ever since murdoch said he was going to de-index the wsj. the idea is to allow content creators to monetize the site by creating partnerships with Bing and allowing Bing to advertise, "if you want the best news, search with bing" or something like that. This way it drives market share to Bing, which then pays back to the content creator. Lets face the facts. if the 1001st site is geocities then you aint gonna click it regardless of whether google lists it number 1. If google results are crap people will leave.
Mark Cuban should just give all that money to charity AND remove himself from the internet, in every way, shape or form, forever.
Now, IMHO, that would be a great use of his money and effort, benefiting us all.
Microsoft's continual utter failure to comprehend the difference between "trying to win" and "trying to make the other guy lose" is exactly why they got hit with monopoly suits in the first place. Way to go not learning anything, Microsoft.
Why do so many powerful people still fail to understand captialism?
all 1000 would have to leave in order for it to make a difference, and convincing 1000 people to ditch the site that gives them the most traffic would be very hard, even for a million.
The "Top 1000" sites are the ones I don't bother searching for: google, microsoft, yahoo, salon, nytimes, espn, amazon: I already know what they are. You use a search engine to search for stuff you can't find.
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Its obvious that most posters here either dont know how to read or too lazy to read the post before commenting. For those who are at least literate:
THis is the post from blogmaverick
***********
And as the Google, Murdoch discussions continue, some people have actually started to recognize there might be something to what I wrote in May of 08
Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?
Better search ? Too subjective. Better monetization ? After the fact. Better User Interface ? Will we know it when we see it ? A new and different search ? Semantic ? Human powered ? We won’t know till we know.
But what about the Google Index, all the websites that are indexed by Google ? What is it worth to be in the Google Index ? What would you, as a website owner require in order to remove your site from the Google Index and no longer be available when someone does a google search ?
It should just be a matter of dollars and cents and sense, shouldn’t it ?
How many websites would have to recuse themselves from the Google Index before Google Search was negatively impacted ?
Mahalo.com thinks it needs to support the 25k most common search terms in order to be successful. What would happen if MicroSoft or Yahoo or a MicroHoo went to the 5 top results for the top 25k searches and paid them to leave the Google Index ?
A theoretical maximum of 125k sites, but with overlap, probably closer to 100k or less, times how much per site on average ?
The math starts to get interesting. At $1,000 per site average times 100k sites, thats only $ 1 Billion Dollars. The distribution would obviously favor the larger sites, so of that billion dollars, would the top 1k sites take 500k each and the remaining 99k split the rest ?
Given the stakes, why stop at $ 1 Billion Dollars ? Would the top 1k most visited sites take a cool $1mm each, plus a committment from MicroSoft or Yahoo to drive traffic through their search engines to more than make up for the lost Google Traffic. After all, once consumers realized that Google no longer had valid search results for the top 25k searchs, that traffic would most likely go to MicroSoft and Yahoo.
And why we are at it, why not require that these 100k sites switch from Googles Publisher Network to Yahoo’s or MicroSofts ? It would start to earn back the $1 Billion paid out very quickly.
On top of that, in order to grease the skids even further, why not issue advertising credits to the sites that switched off Google ? Its soft dollars, that would sweeten the pot and drive more traffic.
IN essence, its no different that any other content aggregation play. Its paying for content . But, It would take some big ones to go for it and see if it worked. However, without question, every search engine has some number of core sites, that when removed from its index , destabilizes the value of its search.
The question is how many ? What would it cost to get that number of sites to turn Google off and stay off, and would the traffic created as users switch from Google more than compensate for the cost ?
Or would Google recognize the risk and jump in and offer more to websites to stay ?
Sure would be interesting to find out.
Great way to create some NEW top 1000 websites....
I await the day when Microsoft can no longer buy their way out of a mistake and keep trucking on. While their coffers are quite big I'm sure it'l end at some point, esp. when you got idiots such as this guy helping ruin their reputation(as if they needed help). One day microsoft is gonna do another stupid move and then suddenly find that their old method of burning through cash will no longer work.
That was my first reaction, too.
Double Cola > *everything else* (including Jolt)
So maybe $1 mil is a lot of money for the average blogger. But take a multi-billion dollar company such as Yahoo? I don't think that they would remove themselves from the #1 search engine for a mere $1 mil.
It's not the index that counts now, it's the users. Today "searching the internet" is synonymous with google and with "to google". Unlisting from google's index would mean absolutely nothing. Users (usually) do not use google to search for "Company X". Users usually search for products and services. Take away the first entries and users will click on the following results, eventually buying from the "underdogs". Unsubscribing from google's index would be suicidal from a sales point of view and only a moron or digital era impaired old dinosaur like murdoch could actually believe such a scenario would be good for business. Not to talk about the fact that 1000 sites is a grain of sand in the desert of google's index. And not to mention about the proposed sum being too little to bribe giants that could be significant. (1 mil is peanuts for ibm, hp or amazon, for example). These being said, this must be some april fools' joke or that guy is smoking some serious shit.
I'm no lawyer, but this sounds an awful lot like it would be an anti-trust violation.
1. Spam googles index with 1000 sites
2. Wait for payment to move to microsoft
3. Profit
4. ????
(Ok, wrong order but this time the profit comes without extra work on our part....)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Likely the top 1000 made about 1 million in the time it took me to read the article.
Excuse me while I start a grassroots campaign to get my website in the top 1000! Slashdot and Stephen Cobare I need you!
I'm sure they could find that information by searching Bing. That's the entire point of 'killing Google', isn't it? To take over as number one search engine.
If MS believes their service is good enough (and well-known enough) to do this, they should delist themselves from Google's indices. But they don't, so they won't.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The referenced article has this little gem in it:
"I'm sure Microsoft is looking for ways to choke Google. After all, that's what competitors do...."
Is this from the "Tonya Harding School of Business"?
I'm sure Microsoft should be looking for ways to best Google, otherwise there is no point in competition; as only the lowest assholes do it by hurting their competitor. Unless its boxing, but a kick in the nuts is still against the rules.
1. Suggest plan to have Microsoft pay $1B to lure the top-1000 sites away from Google.
2. Have your revenue sites, currently ranked between 1001 and 2000 at Google, move to the top 1000.
3. ????
4. Profit!
They could just create a few domains, set them as top 1000th, and get the money. It's the best business plan ever :)
I'm ready for my check! Just tell me when!
Visit my Forums?
1) it it is a horribly BAD idea.
a) any business that could use the million would probably be cutting thier own throats. (Can a million buy enough advertising to make up the lost new customers that dropping off the Google radar would cost you? I doubt it)
b) The top 1000 is not a static list. Granted, there might not be a lot of change-over, players like Yahoo!, NASDAQ etc will always have a place, but motherjones.com, w3schools.com etc are not so secure in thier position. If a site is on the top 1000 for a week, does it get an offer too?
c) As others have pointed out, it might give Bing a bad rep for "buying" it's prominence.
d) Is this deal going to be a lifetime agreement? Does it cover alternate domain names etc? I can't imagine any company agreeing to keep any domain and any web accessible pages out of Google's index in perpetuity.
2) it's not bribery, it's perfectly legal chicanery. If I want to pay Mike's Rustproofing a sum to never again use print media advertising in any form (I do so hate windshield fliers! and the owner agrees, that is perfectly legal, even if other customers have no objection to the fliers or even derive some benefit from them. I would argue that such a deal is even in the public interest, since many of us hate windshield fliers and tat collection of fliers, pamphlets and newspaper inserts that cover our porches like dead leaves. The chicanery comes in if I happen to own shares in a rival rust proofing company, or, as in this case, I own shares in another advertising medium. Personally, I'm surprised and slightly disappointed in my fellow slashdotters. I for one hope this deal becomes a reality, because then a cool million U$ is just a googlebomb away! Get out there and get busy crafting the perfect googlebomb* guys!
*a suggestion for the perfect googlebomb: Try to get the profile pages of the top 500 slashdotters (measured by whatever criteria you like, lifetime karma rating, total number of posts, lowest 500 UID's whatever) into the top 1000 of google. Make a pre-arranged agreement that any slashdotter whose profile makes it into the top 1000 will use 10% of the free money to buy gift subscriptions for the rest of us! That's 20,000 subscriptions at the standard rate. We would only need 50 sucessfully googlebombed profiles to be able to buy subscriptions for everybody here! Hell, we could probably even buy a subscription for our most prolific member AC if we felt like being nice.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
I was just reading about Order of Succession. Lacking a papal bull to assert otherwise, this post is the legitimate heir to the bastard son of an anonymous coward, who had a notion but failed to make an assertion. I would have liked social studies a lot more if we had done a comparative survey of succession methods (such as Tanistry) with the British Isles providing the case studies in strife and dysfunction. "For today's lesson in the optics of legitimate conception, we turn again to the British Isles."
From what I can see, tortious interference doesn't kick in until there is breach of contract. Nor am I aware of anything in law against forming market partnerships short of exploiting monopoly powers.
This whole thread, people seem not to get the point: if content is king, there's no reason why the owners of content shouldn't engage in a coordination game to protect their collective interests. It's not obvious that the search engine middle people should have gained the dominant economic hand.
The key phrase here being "if content is king". The content owners would like to think so, but the internet says otherwise: there is a heck of a lot of base load in pornography, drugs, and Asian merchandise. The government can bulk relocate the top 1000 street corner drug dealers in LA to the Chino human storage facility and it would dent the drug supply for weeks, or maybe even days or hours. There is also the long tail, user created content not yet aggregated at a major social networking site, and the content formerly known as knowledge.
Against this you have the cultural lock-in of impressionable young adults, and baby boomers who haven't yet figured out that if Elvis is still alive, he's probably fatter than Marlin Brando and creepier than Howard Hughs (who disappeared from sight for a good while himself).
There is also highly precarious tier of mass-market content manufactured against the better post-evolutionary judgement of its customer base. The macro breweries became successful, in part, because they managed to make the taste of a good beer a dim memory. Similarly, news products are continually debased, and rely more on customer momentum than choice opportunities.
It's extremely dangerous for a mass-market success story which has invested billions of dollars lulling their primary market to sleep on quality issues to introduce a choice event into the marketplace. It could be that some people discover that Google without many of the current top 1000 sites actually returns more interesting search results, as an acquired taste, given a fifteen minute taste test. Who knew?
There are more precarious market gorillas out there than people think. Cigarettes make women ugly at a younger age. Natural Coke and Pepsi make you obese. The holy trinity of corn/soy/sodium are an express train to the afterlife. Sports are the life obsession of the politically disenfranchised (for myself, hockey scores improve my minutes, while destroying my hours and days). The tripe on most news services actively sabotages attention span and issue comprehension. Duff Beer does not make you sexy. The seven never-fail sex tips of an airbrushed super model is not going to save your marriage (if the male sexual response proved too subtle to master in private study).
You can't just randomly yank the chain on these captive markets without risk of waking your customers up. There was a story here a few days ago about intelligence: many people have it, few use it. Requires effort. It's less effort to delegate to the lower brain functions, as shaped by evolutionary psychology that outlived its crown. Mmmm beer. Mmmm donuts. Mmmm bacon.
What gives the marketers an orgasm is the old joke "Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes." This is the reflex they relentle
Somebody should give the man a gun. And a first aid kit to treat his foot. Both feet.
It seems like anyone ought to be able to put up a web page that happens to link to any website. Google currently provides the courtesy of allowing people to de-list, but are they legally obligated to in some way? On my personal website am I not allowed to link to whatever website I want?
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
They infringed the law, they pay the penalty.
I usually find experts exchange to be pretty well informed on the answers they give out, also a little trick that not a lot of people know about: If you scroll to the bottom of the page you'll find all of the answers to the question being asked, whether or not you have a paid for account.
This would trivially fail as even if the top 1000 sites were to agree to leave Google, each one would *individually* have interest in betraying the plot and staying. I.e. the bribe price shall not be the *average* but the rational price of betrayal, which is much higher, and actually increases with the number of participants.
I think perhaps he's watched too much Austin Powers, or not enough...
Now if he offered 100 BILLION dollars, he might get some takers.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
What is in it for him? He think Microsoft will give him money? He just got a deathwish?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why do you care so much about Microsoft over Google? What's the angle? Besides, don't you have enough money?
And, as others have pointed out, Google got where they were because they're (arguably, anyway) better than anything else out there. Why would the top 1000 sites take a one-time $1m payoff, knowing all the search-driven traffic they'd lose, which if they're a top 1000 site, would probably quickly overshadow that $1m? It doesn't make any sense. It'd be like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
How about, oh, making a better search engine? That might beat Google. Or maybe Google's just done so well, no one will ever beat them. (Yeah, right.)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Basically a few things could happen.
Either your company is fully web based and web dependent, like YouTube (ok, very bad example), Facebook or similar only-on-the-web things. Then, basically, you're "selling" your company for a million. You'll still have your company, but it won't nearly generate the revenue, because it most likely now lacks its most important advertising spot.
Or your company is a very big brick-and-mortar business, akin to IBM, Coke or Fox News. Then that million is peanuts, especially in the light that you do have competitors and they will not be off the radar of many people, at least 'til they realize that there's some search engine but Google. And by the time they found out about the existance of Bing, the damage to these companies is already done.
Not to mention that they'll probably rather find Yahoo (because they might know about the messenger) than Bing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm pretty sure google is one of the top 1000 site. Wouldn't he have to pay google to get google out of google?
Even if he pays, Google can easily afford to pay the top 1000 sites $2M to stay in the index. No chance this plan might work.
if they are in the top 1k, they are already successful and obviously understand the importance of their position in search results. they aren't going to mess with that for a one-time payment of $1 million. changing how their company is advertised via search results is something that could affect them for years to come.
Google, Gmail, picasa, google news are all in the top 1000. give google 4 million dollars do not pass go.
Also people don't search for the top 1000. They just go there and use them.
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” – Mohandas Gandhi quote at Red Hat headquarters.
Wait, why would anyone do that?
http://outcampaign.org/
Yeah, guess your plan is bullet proof. As long as the lawyers had an ITT grad with them...
You are too kind. Mark Cuban isn't just really, really stupid. He's also a major asshole.
Like having to scroll ALL THE WAY down the page?
(sorry if you didn't know that, or I've missed the sarcasm, no snark intended. If you just keep scrollin' on down the answers are usually there at the bottom.)
You take the million, fine ... but what about next year? Do you get another million, or was this a one-shot deal, in which case a million is nowhere near enough to permanently remove a top-1000 site.
It really doesn't matter. The bulk of the top 1000 sites, whether they be the BBC, Facebook, the newspapers, any of the Fortune 500 companies, etc, have annual budgets that are many many times the size of your $1m bribe. They won't risk changing this year's business plan for a mere $1m payment, let alone every year's plan.
> As effective as spitting in the wind.
Well if spitting did not work, Maybe he should use more liquid and try pissing in the wind.
RLH
Suppose, continuing this thought experiment for a moment, that it really became common place to pay websites to a) modify their robots.txt, disallowing certain spiders or b) block the spiders in question from connecting to them.
In case a), I think you will quickly find that search engines will start ignoring robots.txt. I don't know if robots.txt qualifies as a lock under the DMCA, but if it does, it would cost much less than the market share about to be lost would cost to officially reconstitute to a foreign jurisdiction where this poses no problem.
In case b), you would probably see spiders masking their activity. At first by changing their user agent to that of IE8 say, but later on you would get spiders operating from regular homes to get around ip-address blocks. Eventually search engines might even release tools to their end-users to help accomplish this.
Mark Cuban may find it a bit difficult to get the site in Alexia's #1 position to remove themselves from their own list.
You are so right...
Mark Cuban is an idiot, and the only reason he has money is that he managed to find an even bigger idiot at Yahoo to approve the acquisition of broadcast.com. Though I guess you have to give him some credit for that...
Mark Cuban would be a billion dollars poorer, presumably the EU would relieve him of a bit more. Bing would still suck. And we could point it out for ever more as an example of extreme stupidity.
thank you for xeroxin' that quote off their website, saved me some googling time.
When all else fails, try.
I, for one, do not believe that Google uses Puppy Juice to power its data centers.
However, since the allegation has been raised, it is unsettling that Google has (so far) failed to deny the widespread use of Puppy Juice in their data centers.
If Google indeed is innocent of the use of Puppy Juice, then why will they not at least issue a statement to that effect?
Hopefully Google will issue a clarification soon as to their Puppy Juice consumption policy.
Indeed, their failure to deny the use of Puppy Juice in data centers, tends to lend credence to the rumors circulating in Zambia that Google employees are provided a monthly ration of Puppy Juice as an employment benefit... and Google does not even deny this benefit exists.
Its as though Google thinks that as long as they ignore the Puppy Juice scandal it will go away!
Again, I personally do not believe that Google endorses the consumption of Puppy Juice...but the fact that they have not yet issued an official denial of the use of Puppy Juice, in the face of all this evidence, has left me wondering.
Especially, considering the recent rumors that have been surfacing in Iceland, about Kitty Juice.
Interesting idea.
Would be great if Google would accomodate Mark Cuban and cull every mention of him from their searches.
"Hey, who's this Mark Cuban guy?"
I don't know, lets google him....
Everytime you google Mark Cuban, God kills a kitten.
They ought to change title to
Mark Cuban's plan to kill top 1000 web sites
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
I don't use google to find amazon or ebay.
The question everyone should be asking is, How can I have my cake and eat it? How can I play this guy and grab his million bucks for free?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Obviously we're talking metric. Some huge Italian (French are too skinny) who, from cheek to cheek, measures the same as the wavelength of krypton-86. (I know there's a standing wave joke in here somewhere.)
1000 X 1 million is a billion. For that, they somehow move from Google? It seems a fool and his money will soon be parted... even if he has the 1 billion.
lol so lets pay the top 1000 sites to never get any hits again... great idea.. good luck with that!
you'd get better results by writing your search on a dirty car window and leaving your phone number! hahaha
Isn't it like giving 1 million to Obama for not to contest as US President?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
...under the age of 20 they probably don't even recognize the term anymore.
Crush you like they crushed your father, in the jaws of a giant mechanical dinosaur. Love them or hate them, son, you can not stand against them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
would be to convince google to unlist themselves from the google index
this idea sounds stupid.
a better idea would be to give away those millions to bing users... for example by letting users participate in a free lottery, every time they make a query...
in this day and age, you know, you'll have to not only give away your service for free, you'll also have to pay your users :-)
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The main problem I see would be that Google would be the most visited website, so you would fail at number 1 of 1000.
How exactly do you actually do that?
Backwards in several ways actually.
1. He wants to get into a spending fight with Google, which has tons of cash and good will. Is it really in the nation's interest to try and buy off customers to feed a convicted monopolist? It would explode when the first company leaks the news.
2. He suggests the value to a company of being listed in Google is just a matter of money and picking which is cheaper? But it's not. There's the impression of instant accessibility, relevance to needs, timeliness, existence in the key market, communications, etc. If you are not in Google, all the work you put into leveraging your brand with original content is lost.
3. Google's customers are people looking for something they want. The 100 top sites are known, their domains are known. They already have plenty of links from other sites. It will hurt the big customers more. Look at BMW which got blacklisted by Google temporarily for trying to fool it with black SEO. And what about international and mobile customers?
4. It won't stick. Even if a lot of money was paid out, the companies could take the money and then leave. Or is that money supposed to be for an indefinite period of time without performance guarantees? The best thing Microsoft could do frankly is buy stock in Google.
Important part of his resume, IMO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban#Insider_trading_allegations
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Lets see... top 1000 websites...
1) Google.com ...
2) Google news
3) docs.google.com
4) Froogle.com
5) images.google.com
This is looking pretty good for Google after all. It's almost 'venture captial.'
I remember when people did, but i don't think anyone says that anymore, just "copy it" or (more now) "scan it".
This plan would never work. Here's why:
Amazon (which expects $300 million profit next quarter alone) probably gets $1 million in sales from Google search results each day. They'd never give that up. Most large sites would lose money on this bet, even in the short run.
Finally, even if the top 1,000 sites went along, and you "removed the quality" sites from Google, the next "top 1000" would get a surge in business and would rapidly improve their quality and economies of scale. Bing could not keep the search monopoly they bought, and unless their actual search algorithms were better than Google's they'd be pushed back into second place.
classy whores and crack whores. Mark Cuban must've been tokin' up some good sh|t to come up with this idiotic idea. Put the pipe down dude and work on your little basketball franchise. It needs it.
Give him a gun, and a hat that looks like a shoe, (see, he's not that bright and..... oh, never mind)
You can pay me five dollars a week to be your friend, and for an extra dollar, I will give you-know-who a dirty look and call them “poo poo head” every time I see them.
Why is nobody asking the important questions?
I'll take that cash, I'm #1 on Google for a very competitive phrase and I hate Google!
http://redtideflorida.org
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http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/10/2234213/Rupert-Murdoch-Says-Google-Is-Stealing-His-Content
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
Yeah, you see, what would happen when using that plan, is that the top 1,000 sites would become the top 1,001 to top 2,000 sites.