Will MSN develop it's own brand of search?

• Apr. 2, 2003

Research group Soundview technology group recently announced that Microsoft plans to develop its own version of pay per click engine as part of their renewed focus on search.  Although Microsoft officials denied the report, they did admit to expanding their interest in developing some sort of search service, so that they don't have to rely on partners to provide results.

 

Whether they develop a crawler based search service, or PPC service the implications are clear, Either Yahoo!s Inktomi results, or Overture's PPC are in jeopardy.  The timeframe is unclear, however, and Microsoft officials refused to speculate.

 

Like any large company, though, I would imagine that Microsoft can and will commit whatever resources are needed to develop a viable alternative to their current providers.  The question is what type of product do we anticipate?

 

My guess would be to side with the research group and go with a PPC service.  After all, MSN is one of the largest web portals in the world.  It's not an accident that by default MSN is set as your home page when you first install Internet explorer.  Just like it's no accident that if you type a search into the address bar of your browser you land on an MSN search page.

 

So, given the fact that the majority of internet users may not be as search savvy as others, it is a safe bet that Microsoft will want to monopolize this "captive" audience?  And what better way to capitalize on this?  By developing a PPC search service.

 

They would likely display results as they are now, with the paid listings at the top, followed by the "free" results supplied by Inktomi.  This way, Microsoft will make money on the top listings, just like Overture has done over the past couple of years. 

 

There is no payoff to Microsoft if they develop the "best free search service in the world"  Sure they could potentially provide the best, most relevant search results in the world, but how would they make money on that?

 

Rob Sullivan

Searchengineposition.com

Search Engine Positioning

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