Suppose it is illegal. Are you really going to challenge the officer to take evidence and arrest you rather than just delete the photos? If so, you are a bolder man than I.
The prices will not be higher. Examples are these online food ordering websites so popular in colleges, like campusfood.com - the price for using the website is zero, but the restaurants still pay campusfood for the service of directing business - at no cost to users.
In other words, if I call and buy my Lo Mein for 5 bucks, China Cafe gets all 5 in revenues. But if I place the same order via campusfood.com they probably have to pay a few percent to campusfood, and they only get maybe 4.90 in revenue, which is still a large profit to them, because the original margins are well wide enough.
This really isn't fair - selling consoles at a loss is a solid and tested business practice for decades. And they aren't paying people to search, their advertisers are.
Out of all the searches that occur, a small handful are the true moneymakers. When you search Google for "British prime ministers" the resulting ads are not very profitable to them. In fact, some searches are so unprofitable and clearly just information seeking, that Google will not even display ads at all.
The important searches are things like "Best Digital Camera," "Kelly Blue Book BMW 325i," "The Da Vinci Code," and so on. These are searches that are very likely to result in a sale.
What MSFT is doing doesn't seem that innovative because it's so obvious - but no one is doing it.
Think of club promotors on sidewalks in NYC or Vegas or whatever. Typical entry is let's say cover of $10. But if you take a stupid little card from someone advertising the club, maybe that gets you free entry. Why? No reason, you aren't special, just you happened to pick up the advertisement. The club is paying the promotor to offer you a discount, so that you eventually buy the real product (drinks at the club, or whatnot).
So if the marginal profit on a $400 digital camera is about (total guess) $150 bucks, and MSFT only demands the advertiser pay a cost per action, then that's $150 dollars of value that can be shared by a) Sony/Canon/whoever, b) Microsoft, and c) the USER!
The point here is that it doesn't even matter if Google offers better search now! Going forward, I'll probably product search/research on Google, but go over to Microsoft to make the all-important final decision (because it's plainly the rational decision - my product WILL be cheaper)!
If people pay attention, instead of throwing it out the window, this could be a gamechanger - it isn't the same as BigWallet, which essentially just shared the already offered referral deals with you (half a percent of the sale, usually). This could be a significant deal for everyone involved. Cost per action payment is the key.
YHOO Stock Price (Approximate)
Pre-Offer of 31: 19
Immediately after: 30
After initial rejection: 28ish
After MSFT walks away: 24
One day later (and since), rumors swirling: 27
After MSFT returns to table: we'll see tomorrow!
Obviously, if MSFT is interested in "Yahoo Search" as an effort to mount a challenge against Google, it isn't really interested in Y!'s technology, but rather its traffic. Obviously, that traffic flows mostly from visits to www.yahoo.com.
Now, if MSFT, say, goes through and buys just the Yahoo Search division, it sounds like Yahoo is free to go become a content/media/etc. company free of worrying about Google and search.
My question: who gets domain over the homepage, Yahoo.com? If Yahoo retains Yahoo, but MSFT owns the little search box on the page, then who decides how prominently the search is featured on the homepage, how it is integrated into the content, etc.? Yahoo would have incentive to make the content front and center, and who cares about the search box...
It might be hard for MSFT to integrate all of Yahoo, but it's even harder for MSFT to integrate part of Yahoo...
I still expect a full acquisition to occur. Whether its $32, $33, or $34 or something else, we'll see...
The German Wikipedia is currently ranked 2nd according to the wikindex.com, but the fascinating part is what other popular wikis are out there: the World of Warcraft wiki is huge, beating many euro language wikipediae; TV show wikis are big, as are online games and sexual collections.
I guess my point is that I agree with you: the interesting thing about wikis is the non-standard collection of ideas, no matter how "non-important" or esoteric they seem to the general public. Bingo!
One "side-wiki" that I frequent is the Lostpedia. Package that with the season DVD box set and you've got a whole new kind of product.
Rather than publish the X "most popular articles," I think a more fun compilation would be a collection of the most unique, un-Encyclopaedia Brittanica articles on Wikipedia. Things that would never have made it into a real encyclopedia before the web, but that have flourished on Wikipedia.
Or, along the same line, anything that showcases it as not just another encyclopedia would be cool. I'm sure there's some other cool ideas out there.
(P.S. - My first ever Slashdot post!)
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Suppose it is illegal. Are you really going to challenge the officer to take evidence and arrest you rather than just delete the photos? If so, you are a bolder man than I.
In other words, if I call and buy my Lo Mein for 5 bucks, China Cafe gets all 5 in revenues. But if I place the same order via campusfood.com they probably have to pay a few percent to campusfood, and they only get maybe 4.90 in revenue, which is still a large profit to them, because the original margins are well wide enough.
Same thing will happen here.
This really isn't fair - selling consoles at a loss is a solid and tested business practice for decades. And they aren't paying people to search, their advertisers are.
The important searches are things like "Best Digital Camera," "Kelly Blue Book BMW 325i," "The Da Vinci Code," and so on. These are searches that are very likely to result in a sale.
What MSFT is doing doesn't seem that innovative because it's so obvious - but no one is doing it.
Think of club promotors on sidewalks in NYC or Vegas or whatever. Typical entry is let's say cover of $10. But if you take a stupid little card from someone advertising the club, maybe that gets you free entry. Why? No reason, you aren't special, just you happened to pick up the advertisement. The club is paying the promotor to offer you a discount, so that you eventually buy the real product (drinks at the club, or whatnot).
So if the marginal profit on a $400 digital camera is about (total guess) $150 bucks, and MSFT only demands the advertiser pay a cost per action, then that's $150 dollars of value that can be shared by a) Sony/Canon/whoever, b) Microsoft, and c) the USER!
The point here is that it doesn't even matter if Google offers better search now! Going forward, I'll probably product search/research on Google, but go over to Microsoft to make the all-important final decision (because it's plainly the rational decision - my product WILL be cheaper)!
If people pay attention, instead of throwing it out the window, this could be a gamechanger - it isn't the same as BigWallet, which essentially just shared the already offered referral deals with you (half a percent of the sale, usually). This could be a significant deal for everyone involved. Cost per action payment is the key.
YHOO Stock Price (Approximate) Pre-Offer of 31: 19 Immediately after: 30 After initial rejection: 28ish After MSFT walks away: 24 One day later (and since), rumors swirling: 27 After MSFT returns to table: we'll see tomorrow!
Now, if MSFT, say, goes through and buys just the Yahoo Search division, it sounds like Yahoo is free to go become a content/media/etc. company free of worrying about Google and search.
My question: who gets domain over the homepage, Yahoo.com? If Yahoo retains Yahoo, but MSFT owns the little search box on the page, then who decides how prominently the search is featured on the homepage, how it is integrated into the content, etc.? Yahoo would have incentive to make the content front and center, and who cares about the search box...
It might be hard for MSFT to integrate all of Yahoo, but it's even harder for MSFT to integrate part of Yahoo...
I still expect a full acquisition to occur. Whether its $32, $33, or $34 or something else, we'll see...
I guess my point is that I agree with you: the interesting thing about wikis is the non-standard collection of ideas, no matter how "non-important" or esoteric they seem to the general public. Bingo!
One "side-wiki" that I frequent is the Lostpedia. Package that with the season DVD box set and you've got a whole new kind of product.
Rather than publish the X "most popular articles," I think a more fun compilation would be a collection of the most unique, un-Encyclopaedia Brittanica articles on Wikipedia. Things that would never have made it into a real encyclopedia before the web, but that have flourished on Wikipedia. Or, along the same line, anything that showcases it as not just another encyclopedia would be cool. I'm sure there's some other cool ideas out there. (P.S. - My first ever Slashdot post!)