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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?"
The real question is, who would be stupid enough to listen to a man who made almost all of his money soley on the chance decision of buying the domain name "Broadcast.com" and convincing Yahoo! that it was work ~$6 billion dollars to buy out.
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
Why in the world does the summary list to some stupid guys take on Mark Cubans blog post instead of the actual post?
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/13/google-murdoch-madoff/
Not that it answers any of your questions, other than maybe he is a publicity hound.
P.S. In case anyone thinks that his $6 billion jackpot somehow displayed hidden skill or insight, I also point out that he's currently worth a little over $2 billion. That's right, he's lost $4 billion in networth since being bought out by Yahoo!
Technical level is easy: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156412
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Sigh. I know it's waaay too much to ask, but if you actually read his blog post it's not a plan at all - just some ideas that he's throwing around. The headline in TFA (and thence TFS) is misleading.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
First, It was $6B of Yahoo Stock, not $6B cash. I'm sure there are laws on how much you can sell and when.
From Broadcast.com's Wiki.
The record IPO made instant financial successes out of the company's employees through stock options, making 100 employees millionaires on paper (although most of them were unable to exercise their options and sell their shares before the stock price dropped) and founders Cuban and Wagner billionaires.
Second, it may have been 'pure luck' it doesn't look like this was his only venture into entrepreneurial endeavors.
Finally, that's still $2B dollars. From what I've read and the brief interaction in the time I met him (IU vs Purdue Alumni Rugby Match. Flew up in his personal Jet.) He has to be hands down one of the coolest Billionaires I've heard of.
He supported Grokster in the MGM vs Grokster case. He buys random companies and starts random websites. Like bailoutsleuth "a grassroots, online portal for oversight over the US government's $700 billion dollar "bailout" of financial institutions."
Not to mention he spouts off to NBA refs and other players. And shrugs his shoulder when they fine him. "Cuban has been fined by the NBA, mostly for critical statements about the league and referees, at least $1,665,000 for 13 incidents". (Matching each fine with a donation to a Charity). When he said something against Dairy Queen, he voluntarily worked at a DQ for a day.
You can't honestly tell me if you came up with some idea (no matter how stupid) and convinced someone to buy it at the height of a bubble. You wouldn't take your billions and have a ball. Spending the rest of your life drinking, flying around in your jet, yelling at professional sports officials, supporting any cause you thought was cool.
Hell. You could have a "Chyeld Day" on slashdot. Pay off Taco to change banner at the top for a few million.
If this Mark Cuban person has a love affair with Microsoft, then it's the sort of love affair where Microsoft is deeply embarrassed about their drunken one night stand and desperately wishes the other party would shut up about it. Honestly, this is terrible publicity for Microsoft: "Come to us - we're so bad that people have to be paid not to use our competitors". As if any of these big sites would accept such a bribe anyway. I'm fairly sure this wouldn't be legal in the EU either so unless these great big companies have no presence in the EU (yeah right), then the deal would be complicated anyway.
Bing is actually fine. Its problem is that Google is already there and is so successful that their name has become a verb. Displacing that is going to take either very long term and sustained effort or some sort of PR disaster for Google (maybe their search engine is powered by Puppy juice). Bing needs a boost of some sort for certain. Pairing up with Wolfram Alpha is a good thing. Stunts like this (I sincerely hope MS had the sense not to okay this) are sooooooo not a good thing.
Muppet!
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Actually, that's not necessarily the marketer's dream. Kleenex and Xerox have also had headaches because when the name becomes that ubiquitous, you have some issues keeping the rights to it. If the courts decide that your name has become a generic word, then you're in trouble in terms of legal enforcement of your trademark. Xerox in particular has discouraged people from using 'xerox' as a verb, because they're concerned about losing the trademark. From their own website's company factbook, italic emphasis mine:
The Xerox Trademark
Xerox is a famous trademark and trade name. Xerox as a trademark is properly used only as a brand name to identify the company's products and services. The Xerox trademark should always be used as a proper adjective followed by the generic name of the product: e.g., Xerox printer. The Xerox trademark should never be used as a verb. The trade name Xerox is an abbreviation for the company's full legal name: Xerox Corporation.
XEROX is a registered trademark of Xerox Corporation.
Wikipedia has a little information on this, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox#Trademark
--Rachel
append your search queries with "-experts echange", problem solved. Well, it solved it for me, YMMV.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not to mention he spouts off to NBA refs and other players.
And their mothers http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2009/news/story?id=4157481
He's an attention whore with no class (and that is true regardless of what one things of Kenyon Martin or his mother).