Microsoft's ads deride Google a bad place to shop
By By Michael Liedtke on November 28, 2012
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft is trying to skewer Google
as a lousy holiday shopping guide in its latest attempt to divert more traffic
to its Bing search engine.
The attack starts Wednesday with a marketing campaign
focused on a recent change in how Google runs the part of its search engine
devoted to shopping results. The revisions require merchants to pay Google to
have their products listed in the shopping section.
In its new ads, Microsoft Corp. contends the new approach
betrays Google Inc.'s longstanding commitment to provide the most trustworthy
results on the Web, even if it means foregoing revenue. To punctuate its point,
Microsoft is warning consumers that they risk getting "scroogled" if
they rely on Google's shopping search service.
The message will be highlighted in TV commercials
scheduled to run on NBC and CNN and newspaper ads in The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The blitz also will appear on
billboards and online, anchored by a new website, Scroogled.com.
The barbs are likely to inject more antagonism into an
already bitter rivalry between two of the world's best-known and most powerful
technology companies.
Google's search engine is dominant on the Internet, with
Bing running a distant second. Microsoft's Office and Windows software remains
an integral part of personal computers, but Google has been reducing the
importance of those programs and PCs with the success of Web-based services and
its Android operating system for smartphones and tablet computers.
Google still doesn't require websites to pay to be listed
in its main database. That's the index providing the results for requests
entered into Google's all-purpose search box. A query made there for a
particular product, such as computers, will still include results from merchants
who haven't paid for the privilege of being included.
But anyone who clicks on a tab at the top for
shopping-specific results will see only listings for paying merchants. That
means results from sites, including Web retailing giant Amazon.com Inc., aren't
displayed unless they pay. Amazon so far has only occasionally paid to have
some of its wares listed in Google's shopping section. Zappos, a site owned by
Amazon, has been more willing to pay the price to be listed in Google's
shopping results.
Google defends the fee-based approach as a way to
encourage merchants to provide more comprehensive and accurate information
about what they're selling.
"I think you just get a well-organized set of
product information, ways to buy it, and really have a great experience
there," CEO Larry Page said during a conference call with analysts last
month.
In a statement late Tuesday, Google said it's pleased
with the response to the new shopping system, which offers listings from some
100,000 sellers.
Google, like Microsoft, also accepts payments for ads
that are triggered by specific search terms and appear to the right or on top
of regular search results. Those are labeled in gray letters as ads.
Since its inception in 1998, Google has tried to cast
itself as a force for good while depicting Microsoft as a ruthless empire.
But Google has become less cuddly as it has established
itself as the Internet's main gateway — and through that, as a well-oiled
moneymaking machine. The company's search engine is so influential that
government regulators in the U.S. and Europe have been investigating whether
Google has been stifling competition by giving special preference to its own
services in search results.
Microsoft, which faced its own antitrust inquiries more
than a decade ago, is among the companies that had prodded the investigation of
Google. This time, it's pouncing on Google for straying for from its own principles.
Since mid-October, Google's shopping section has included
only listings from merchants who paid to be included in the results. In some
cases, the order of the shopping results has been dictated by how much money
Google received for the listing. The change coincides with what is expected to
be the most lucrative holiday shopping season on the Web yet.
Google discloses that it receives payments in small print
at the bottom of the shopping results page. The notice is also visible if a
user clicks on a link at the top of the shopping results page, under the
heading: "Why these products?"
What's left unsaid is the omission of sites such as
Amazon, which often offers some of the best deals on the Web.
The financially driven system for determining the results
in a major part of Google's search engine breaks new ground for a company whose
idealistic founders, Page and Sergey Brin, once railed against the perils of
allowing money to influence which Web links to show.
Brin and Page preached about the issue in academic papers
that they wrote about search while conceiving Google as Stanford University
graduate students. They more famously delved into the topic when discussing
Google's "don't be evil" creed in a letter written when the company
went public in 2004.
"Our search results are the best we know how to
produce," Brin and Page wrote in the letter. "They are unbiased and
objective, and we do not accept payment for them."
Microsoft contends that Google is doing a disservice to
its users with the new approach, as many users may not even realize that the
results in shopping search are being swayed by money.
"We want consumers to know in contrast to route that
Google has pursued, we are staying true to the DNA of what a good search engine
is really about," said Mike Nichols, Bing's chief marketing officer.
"We will rank results on what's relevant to you and not based on how much
someone might pay us."
Microsoft once accepted payments that can affect the
order of results. But the company says it hasn't accepted payments since it
re-branded its search engine as Bing in 2009.
Bing's shopping section includes merchant listings for
Shopping.com, a service that gets referral fees. Microsoft says the payments
don't influence how Bing ranks its shopping results.
___
Online:
Microsoft's attack site: http://scroogled.com
Google shopping site: http://www.google.com/shopping
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