Microsoft To Announce AdWords Competitor

[Chris]

Since Microsoft embraced the search industry, they have been committed to making MSN Search a relevant and viable alternative to other industry leaders like Ask, Google, and Yahoo.

MSN Search officially launched in February of this year, complete with a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Since the launch Microsoft has spared little expense in their efforts to thrust MSN Search to the forefront. However, one area where MSN Search falls short is offering users a non-third party advertising service. Currently, Microsoft uses Yahoo-owned Overture to provide search advertisements.

However, a number of leaks and grapevine-speak indicate a MSN Search-owned advertising service will be announced soon. A story in Bloomberg.com (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a1lGN8_MdFJM) reveals Microsoft is on the verge of announcing their own search engine advertising service, maybe as soon as tomorrow, March 16, 2005.

The service will be similar to competing programs from Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. Microsoft will announce a pilot program March 16, said the people, who asked not to be identified. These paid searches auction off placement next to Web search results to companies with related products.

The program may help Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, boost advertising revenue at its MSN Internet unit and revive sales growth. Microsoft's revenue will rise 8 percent this fiscal year, the lowest pace ever, after an average of 38 percent in the 1990s. The U.S. market for paid search will more than triple to $12.6 billion by 2010, according to Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray Cos.

On SearchEngineWatch forums (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=4682), Danny Sullivan had these thoughts about Microsoft’s service and their agreement with Overture, which expires next June:

“I think toward the end of the year is more likely for a rollout, and I'd suspect we'd see Yahoo as a backfill until the advertisers have filled in the new program.

The Yahoo contract does expire June 2006. But it's typical with these things that you can end earlier, if you want. That's what happened with both the Looksmart and Inktomi contracts. June 2006 certainly would be a hard date for when you'd completely expect them to swamp over, but they could bring it up in scale before then, I'd say.”

Currently, Microsoft has not released any official word about their upcoming search advertising service. If the launch is announced tomorrow, expect Microsoft to issue a press release outlining the company’s goals.

Google Gets AutoLinked?

Recently, Google released an update to their toolbar, which includes the controversial AutoLink feature. Since the launch, AutoLink’s functions have been the center of a number (http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=39582) of (http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=41341) discussions (http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=41104). The majority of those who follow the search engine industry do not like AutoLink’s approach to providing product links on pages that didn’t have them to begin with.

On Threadwatch.org (http://www.threadwatch.org/), the consensus concerning AutoLink is not positive. In fact, a recent post (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/1896) introduced a Firefox plugin called Butler. The plugin is designed so it “dramatically alters the pages on many Google services.” A description of Butler (http://diveintomark.org/projects/butler/) says, “Butler enhances Google search results by adding links to competitors. It also removes ads, changes typography, and a few other useful things.” It is essentially the same as AutoLink, but Butler focuses on Google pages.

A look at the features offered by Butler speaks volumes about the motives behind such a plugin.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

- removes ads on most Google pages
- fixes fonts on most Google pages

Google web search:
- adds links to other search sites ("Try your search on...")
- in news results, adds links to other news sites
- in movie results, adds links to other movie sites
- in weather results, adds links to other weather sites
- in product results, adds links to other product sites

Google image search:
- adds links to other image/photo/art sites

Google News:
- adds links to other news sites

Froogle:
- adds links to other product sites

Google Print:
- Removes image copying restrictions
- adds links to other book sites

Google Toolbar Firefox page:
- adds links to other Firefox-friendly toolbars

A Threadwatch comment (http://www.threadwatch.org/node/1896#comment-9107) originating from Google Blogoscoped (http://blog.outer-court.com/) summed up the implications of Mark’s tool:

Now the catch-22 in Mark’s approach is obvious: would Google complain about his Butler add-on, they’d be offering arguments that could be used against their Toolbar, effectively hurting their own product. And if they don’t react, they’re allowing Mark to set an example of what’s possible and legal to do in terms of changing Google’s content, opening up a door for others to follow. Just imagine Microsoft would be implementing such Google ad removal as default behavior for Internet Explorer 7 – they’d be depriving their competitor of nearly all of their revenues.

The AutoLink discussion continues.

[strum4life]

Does this mean Microsoft will attempt to compete with Adsense? Today I received an email from Entireweb.com that states Yahoo is getting in the game:


Google's AdSense programme is finally going to get some competition. What does Yahoo's move into lower-traffic site advertising mean for the Web?

Yahoo is poised to launch an ad network for small Web publishers styled on a similar offering from Google, sources familiar with the plan told ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com, a move that promises to sharpen competition between the search giants.

[Rocky Moore]

I think is great that Microsoft is launching the service. It is about time. I also wish they would launch an AdSense program!

As for the FireFox extention, I am not really in favor of this even though it is basically trying to open eyes of what could possibly happen down the road. To me it seems this just moves us further down the slipper slope.

One thing I would like to see is a regulation that would require any tool that modifies web content to be listed in the user agent so that web site owners can block or warn people using their content with such tools. I feel this should be a bare minimum requirement if such tools are to be used.

As I see it, Google is currently responsible for people violating copyrights and should stop before lawsuites begin.

[Rocky Moore]

Does this mean Microsoft will attempt to compete with Adsense? Today I received an email from Entireweb.com that states Yahoo is getting in the game:

That would be great! Google needs all the competition it can get.

Will have to keep my eyes out for the Yahoo program.

[tomzo]

I continue to believe MSN is on the move, and that's a great thing. More competition, should keep advertising costs under control, after the steep rise in ppc advertising.

I think google has had it all it's own way for too long, so it's good to see MSN entering the advertising game with it's own adwords style advertising instead of using Overture.

As long as they don't have stupid rules like Overture, I'm sure I will use MSN.

Lettings in London England (http://www.letsrentaproperty.com)

[Rocky Moore]

I continue to believe MSN is on the move, and that's a great thing. More competition, should keep advertising costs under control, after the steep rise in ppc advertising.

I know for my own use I have switched to using MSN search. For the most part it seems to work good for me. Over the last month or two, I have noticed in the logs on my site www.HintsAndTips.com, that I am receiving more traffic from MSN search than Yahoo. While that it not near what I pull from Google, it is moving up from where it was a few months ago.

[Jason Tor]

Alright, now were talking! It's about time that MSN gets in the PPC game. It looks like Google is on their way to being one of the top search engines and not on top of the search engine competition.

I'm sure MSN will get in to the adsense game also, it only makes sense. I am glad that Google finally has some competition - they need it - between their not so great results lately and the fire their coming under from the Autolink feature, MSN is timing this perfectly.

I wonder if Googles stock will fall.

Jason Tor

[roam_dx]

not sure if this has been discussed or how many have already signed up, but its interesting, found it on another forum, can't remember which one....

Yahoo!!!

http://publisher.yahoo.com/

Sign of good things to come...

Its unlikely though that any of these guys will allow publishers to run ads from competetors on the same page as theirs is displayed...that's the only drawback I can see to this, every page I will have to figure out whether I want to use yahoo, google or msn ads...

a little advertising from all three of them on the same page...that will be good, but unlikely

Also, new adsense TOS

Google shall not be liable for any payment based on (a) any amounts which result from invalid queries or invalid clicks on Ads generated by any person, bot, automated program or similar device, as reasonably determined by Google, including without limitation through any clicks or impressions (i) originating from Your IP addresses or computers under Your control or (ii) solicited by payment of money, false representation or request for end users to click on Ads; (b) Ads delivered to end users whose browsers have JavaScript disabled; (c) Ads benefiting charitable organizations and other placeholder or transparent Ads that Google may deliver; (d) Google advertisements for its own products and/or services; or (e) clicks co-mingled with a significant number of invalid clicks described in (a) above, or as a result of any breach of this Agreement by You for any applicable pay period.

hmmm...

what do you think of that??

[TrafficProducer]

Yahoo to start Pay Per Click advertising:-

http://news.com.com/Yahoo%2Bseeks%2Bto%2Bexpand%2Bin%2BGoogle%2Bterrit ory/2100-1024_3-5609792.html

[smakyyy]

It certainly will boost up publishers revenue as they all compete for publisher sites.

[ReviewGolf.com]

MSN Search had made quite a progress already. I think they'll be able to carve a nice piece of the pie in this market as well.

ASK.com on the other hand is a dying breed. It didn't start with a bright idea to begin with. Have you used their paid inclusion service? They charge you but do not guarantee any clicks. Ask.com must go and clear some space for the companies that can deliver.

[ReviewGolf.com]

Yahoo to start Pay Per Click advertising:-

http://news.com.com/Yahoo%2Bseeks%2Bto%2Bexpand%2Bin%2BGoogle%2Bterrit ory/2100-1024_3-5609792.html

Doesn't Yahoo! already own Overture.com?

[rondo]

Don't know about your countries, but here in Australia MSN are on an offline advertising blitz!
TV, Radio, Newspapers, everywhere you look. They are even giving away cash prizes for searching!
I admire their effort, but I don't know long this type of publicity can last.

[thusmann]

Its about time MSN got on the bandwagon! Google needs the competition.

[TrafficProducer]

Doesn't Yahoo! already own Overture.com?

I believe so, and have done for some time. I don't know why the Yahoo part have not introduced PPC sooner. I thought they bought up Overture to get hold of any Patents and Licences of using PPC.

What happens to "Paid for" please consider my website option at $299.00?

[JAugusto]

I have a site that deals about future predictions, but I rarely post predictions on my own name. However all this recent Google x Microsoft news stimulated a lot my imagination...

Check out my Prediction, and post some comments and your own prediction:

My webpage is ZapFuture.com and my prediction is here: (http://www.zapfuture.com/modules.php?name=zPredictions&func=PredictionView&pid=82)

Google OS
------------------------------------
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - March 3, 2009 UTC - Amidst rampant media speculation, Google Inc. finally announced its own operating system, called GO's.

Some say this will be Google’s final attempt to invert last two year’s painful struggle to survive. Google is now a doomed company.

It all started four years ago, on 2005. MSN Search was officially launched on February of that year; but and most important, almost at the same time, a now famous plug-in to Firefox, called Butler, was silently launched without almost no fuss.

But it changed everything. Not a lot of people installed it from start, but it inspired other companies to offer similar tools on their browsers. On 2006, the creators of the Opera browser included a similar tool, not as a plug-in, but already on the product itself, as an option. Using it, the user was able to remove almost all commercial banners, buttons, skyscrapers and inlines from pages considered as UAI. Only some ad-links formats survived. Other soon followed, mostly after the creation the UAI nomenclature.

UAI stand for “Universally Accessible Information” and the definition is “world's information that should be universally and easily free accessible to anyone in a useful, clear and no intrusive or biased way”. The UAI Foundation, created on 2006, was a spin-off of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, but some say Microsoft toss some money in. The fun and ironic part is that the UAI creators say they were inspired by the Google’s mission sentence on top of Google corporate info web page. Besides being almost 10 year old, it’s still there. The UAI Foundation defends that the UAI contents belong to every one of us and those who order and categorized it provide a public service. More, they say that, in order to maintain this information impartial and fair, there should and will be a World organization responsible for providing tools to organize and it for free.

Microsoft joined the UAI crowd on 2007, with the release of sp1 to Internet Explorer 7. The default settings of the browser installation went much further than the pop-up blocking of IE7 and fully supported UAI, thus blocking all commercial content from pages categorized as UAI. And worst of all, like the spyware lists, updates were available on regular basis on pages that ought to be considered as UAI. There was only one big page that was proud of being on top of the UAI list: the good old dmoz.org open directory project!

After some discussion, all Google and MSN Search, almost all Yahoo pages, and many others, ended up categorized as UAI. No commercial content remained on those pages when using IE7. The results were shown as almost part of the browser itself on a fast loading clear reading uniform text. Not even ad-links survived.

Needless to say, Microsoft and Google went to court. Microsoft made some points arguing Google was the first one to alter the content of any web page on its benefit with the introduction, on late 2005, of the AutoLink Google Toolbar Tags. 2005 was, indeed, a shifting year.

After some long court debates, Microsoft changed the default to optional but it was already too late. Google was already seriously hurt right where it hurts the most and Google revenues dropped by more than 70%. Also, Wall Street already has been punishing the GOOG stock, dumping it since the first rumours of the UAI creation.

Some say IE7 sp1 was a direct response from Microsoft to the GBrowser, launched one year before, on 2006. And more, that the Microsoft move was hard play but it was the only move Microsoft could have done in order to survive Google.

And this time around, it’s Google time to, again, invade Microsoft backyard. Let’s see who finally wins. There can be only one...

[TrafficProducer]

A Science Portal. A look at the future?

http://www.ascienceportal.com/index.html

This may have some interest for you.

Links to cutting edge science related web sites. Cutting edge science. Research and breakthroughs using State of the Art and discovery's of new sciences, physics, cosmology, the Universe, power sources, control units, memory devices, displays, portable computers, nanotechnology, organic, biological, medical, neurology, mobile, portable, WAP, G3, electronic, etc. Earth science, engineering and bandwidth solutions. Robotics, gadgets, chemical and telecommunications. Social, psychology and politics. A look at the future?

[The Generator]

Though MSN holds a lot of promise, I've so far found their PPC service to be tedious and boring at best. Their inventory for my three most valuable words on Adwords and Overture is really low. MSN has also not yet integrated the bidding capabilities of Adw and Ov, using a fixed bid system accross several keywords. The only thing it has going for it is it's name, but other than that it's, to be honest, just a sub-standard PPC platform for now.

[jawn_tech]

MSN's own search is still fresh (but quite a performer, imo). I think because it was such a long awaited development, and that it's finally out there, they'll want to make sure it can be as beneficial and profitable as possible, as quickly as possible. I think it goes without saying that the cashflow generating features, such as the PPC and future developments, won't go through 'beta test versions', but will still see some developmental changes as it matures.

That said, SE competition is healthy for all of us in the long run. As the heat gets turned up higher, the SE's will do all they can to reach out to the broadest population as possible, and embrace webmasters, realizing the potential for the webmaster/SE relationship. I'd like to say that was always realized (by the SE's), but it hasn't always appeared that way for some reason. (perhaps unsavory SEO tactics by the few has left us all painted with the same brush?)

Good move on MSN's part.