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It's a sad day when the battle for digital information is between two of the world's most obscene IT Companies, Microsoft and Google. Neither self-serving company has the interests of the public at heart, especially in China, and in the West if hidden information detailing Google's unsavoury relationship with NSA and other security agencies became known! Microsoft is no better having once supplied a 'backdoor' to its Operating System at the request of the NSA. Nevertheless, the stranglehold Google has on information is far worse than the author intimates -- any real democratic government would have legislated long ago forcing Google to relinquish its hold on information searches. Idiotic governments seem to be unaware of today's digital axioms: 'Whoever controls the flow of information rules the world', including governments! Let's hope the open source community gets a viable product out there soon -- then lobbying can begin in earnest! Ed.
GOOGLE'S ultimate rival, Microsoft, is taking on the giant search engine company with a $100 million service that will be called "Bing". Not a bad name and not a bad idea because Google is rapidly becoming to the internet what John Paul Getty's Standard Oil was a century ago … that is, Google has a stranglehold on the web and that is very bad news indeed.
The Google "lock" on internet search activity is going to be very difficult to break — even Microsoft admits that. Recent attempts to crack Google's dominance have been marginal. Yahoo trails far behind; Bing's precursor, Microsoft's Live Search, trails further still.
Twitter, a "tracker" website, is a useful alternative on certain subjects but not for everyone, and the previous alleged Google killer, Wolfram Alpha, turned out to be a good data sorter though nothing to threaten the monster that now has a database of your every move on the web, along with a picture of your back garden (on Google Earth). If any company can regain territory from Google it will be Microsoft with its domination of personal computers and presence in email and related services. Bing opens for business in Australia on Wednesday.
I hope Bing makes headway because Google's iron grip is a real concern when it comes to market competition and potential innovation. At what they call the "back end" of the internet — the architecture that sits behind a million websites — Google is no longer a factor. It is the differentiator.
To succeed on the internet, a business must rank high on Google. It's the only rule when it comes to traffic and that applies to any business where something is being sold or promoted online — airline tickets, bank loans, books … even news.
The science of working Google is now crucial. I know that this column is going to "rate" well on The Age internet site not because it's good, bad or indifferent. Rather it will rate well because I have already mentioned Google 12 times and that means its search machinery — the "web crawlers" that search for keywords — will love it.
And the reverse is also true. If you are unwilling to bend to Google and its demands you don't rate online as a business … unless of course you pay for a place on its pages. Increasingly businesses of every persuasion pay to get their names on the subtle advertisement box that sits on top of Google search lists. What's more, in the murky business of "Google words" competing businesses can bid for each others names in what is an expensive and nasty battle that rarely gets attention.
On the same day Microsoft announced Bing — to generally lukewarm reviews from the technology media — another milestone occurred. TimeWarner, which had been merged at the peak of the dotcom boom with an upstart dotcom called America Online, announced it was now spinning off America Online — it turned out the former superstar of dial-up-internet was no longer wanted by the media empire.
A decade ago when America Online joined with TimeWarner, the media caught its breath — it seemed like the transmitters of content, and not the content providers, were going to rule the world. Now we know that never came to pass.
The winners on the internet are those that control the presentation and retrieval of information. Today that simply means Google, but one company won't rule the show forever. Bing may be the beginning of better days for all concerned.
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