Whitney Hoffman has a great post in which she suggests the battle of the search engines will lead to walled gardens of information (see Searching Walled Gardens…). Her post is in response to Microsoft’s plan to pay Rupert Murdoch for exclusive search access to news sites such as the Wall Street Journal.
I see there being two camps of potential users of Bing!
THE NEWS JUKIES: Some folks will have no choice and will have to use Bing! to get the news they depend on from the source they’ve come to trust. Some might argue the Bing!/WSJ arrangement will be like information extortion by forcing a behavioural change on those who have specifically decided to stick with what they know and those who have no clue what Bing! is.
THE TECH JUNKIES: The technology-purists won’t be told what to do and how to do it. Many would rather forgo the content they love in order to send a message. The fundamentalists among this group will figure out a way to bypass the search restrictions and help the gatekeepers recognize their miscalculation (in case they haven’t yet heard of DRM).
There’s a delicate balance here and it pivots on how Bing!/WSJ will measure their success. I don’t believe it will be based on web clicks and search engine traffic alone. There’s money behind this deal and success will surely be measured by how much money Bing!/WSJ and their advertisers are able to make.
The question becomes, which group has the most influence in that department?
