Mark Cuban's Plan to Kill Google

Mark Cuban is weird. Maybe he should be considering ways to improve his team and not try to play in a field he knows little of.

If such a scheme were hatched, is Google under legal obligation to let companies leave it's index? That is, "hostile indexing" would be illegal? I'm not so sure. Murdoch's comments themselves seemed poorly considered.

Also, being unable to index sites like myspace would hurt, but I doubt that there are many other sites that would hurt Google too much. Travel sites like Expedia seem to do OK without specific carriers, like Southwest. The only one who loses (convenience) is the customer.

With all the free Linux Operating Systems becoming available these days on Netbooks, Notebooks, Laptops and mobile phones, Then these top websites would soon be replaced, Only fools think they can control what people want
Then again he is an American that thinks he can control the Americans like Microsoft are doing in America where consumers can only buy computers with windows installed on them...

The rest of the world won't except being controlled as easy as the Americans except being controlled, they don't know any better,

What an idiot. Maybe we should pay him to go live under a rock so the Mavericks have a chance at being a decent team. And leaving Google for Microsoft, that's like leaving a demon for the devil. Great plan man.

I'm not sure where you're going with this argument, Carling. If anything the proliferation of netbooks would mean more work getting done on the Web on web sites. Further, I see the underlying OS like Linux and the web sites we visit as totally unrelated. Search engines like Google provide a way for us to find web sites we are looking for. I'm not sure what your nationality has to do with it either.

Ron

loganf, exactly, it's a case of 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.'

Thanks for the comment.

Ron

Does anyone want to get in a bidding war with Google? Couldn't they just counter with $1.1m to stay in the index? Totally ridiculous.

Data flows in the direction of least resistance. Eventually the winner would be the one who is cheaper, less restrictive/simple, organic, and so on.

If the top 1000 sites left google...would anyone notice? the answer is yes..the next 1000 that would replace them..and my guess is there are a couple that would stay in the top 1000 after getting the exposure even if the other came back.

Another rich idiot. There should be laws against things like this. Mark Cuban should just give MS 1 billion so they could make a better search engine. If you want to compete, make a better product, that is how it should be. Instead we have a rich idiot saying stuff like, let's bribe a bunch of companies to abandon the best search engine. This is the stuff that is destroying America. I feel and hope that Americans are better than this.

Uh, Mark Cuban has forgotten about how to make dotcom money than you naysayers will ever know. Did you really think all he knows how to do is own a basketball team? Where do you think he got the money to buy it in the first place?

Mark Cuban is the Glenn Beck of the business world. He made his fortune of the dot come bust by being in the wrong place at the right time.

I think he comes up with this crap just to keep him self in the headlines and so people will think he has something interesting to say.

Have a nice day,
mother.....

Mark Cuban, the eccentric owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, has a post in his blog this week suggesting a way to kill Google by paying the top one thousand most popular sites $1M each to leave the Google Index. He wonders if Rupert Murdoch's plan to leave the Google Index could mark the beginning of a full-scale exodus from Google, one which could be expedited with some cash payoffs from Microsoft. Now, I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me that such a ploy would not fly with the government, but for the sake of argument, let's say it would. Why would you want to wipe out Google?

Pay Me, Pay Me, Pay Me My Money Down

I'm sure Microsoft is looking for ways to choke Google. After all, that's what competitors do, but I'm not sure it's in a top web site's best interest to abandon Google, no matter how much cash is involved. If I'm getting a fair amount of traffic from Google, and I make a lot of money, would the million dollar bribe be enough to entice me to cut off that gravy train?

I suppose it's possible. After all a million dollars is not a trivial amount of money to most of us, and if it involved other enticements like placement guarantees and ad deals, it might look good. What's interesting is that the numbers involved in a scheme like this would probably not make a company like Microsoft flinch. Remember, Microsoft was ready to pay $45 billion at one point for Yahoo!.

Play Both Ends Against the Middle

Cuban's plan gets a little more interesting when he suggests that perhaps Google wouldn't stand still while its closest competitor tried to force the market away from its search engine. Maybe Google would up the stakes. After all, they have money too. Maybe the top sites could get Google into a bidding war with Microsoft, but would this be healthy for anyone except the companies that were the recipients of this largess? It probably wouldn't be great for smaller companies who wouldn't be worth the attention in a playing field that was now defined by cash payments.

Too Many Questions

But in the end, there are way too many questions left unanswered. Would Microsoft stock holders stand for this use of Microsoft cash resources in a scheme that still might not work? Would Google up the cash stakes, or more likely tie up such an approach in court for so many years that it wouldn't matter to most of us for a long, long time? Would the government stand by and watch this game without stepping in?

I'm not sure, but for me personally, I can't see the advantage of choking Google in this fashion, or if anyone would be willing to take the risk it would involve of leaving the world's most popular search engine, cash payments not withstanding. Google simply drives too much traffic and why kill the golden goose for spite?

If the top 101 through 1,000 sites left Google (and let's face it, the top 100 almost certainly wouldn't, as they will make more over the years than the $1M) this is what would happen: There would be a new top 101-1000 sites. Google made 1/2 of those sites successful. And they did it because Google has so many users. Until the USERS switch off Google (which will require a war of attrition) the top 100 sites will stay there. There are PLENTY of other sites waiting in the wings to get a notch up. All this plan would do is help those sites (not necessarily a bad thing).

And I have absolutely no reason, as a user, to leave Google. Even if those 900 sites disappeared. Google may be huge, but so far they have been very very good for me. Not just for search ... but Gmail, Android, Docs ... all extensible, accessible and free (I don't mind Adwords at all).

Sounds to me like Mr. Cuban is full of bluster.

I have no clue about the American market, but one of the largest Dutch e-tailers has a turnover of around 500 million dollar. Losing 60% of the search-engine crowd in return for a mere million won't fly. Let's asume the American market is 20 times the size, on par with the differences between our respective economies. Would a large web-only e-tailer with a 10 billion dollar turnover be willing to lose 60% of searchers for a promille of their turnover, while doing nothing will give them both Bing- and Google-customers?

Mark Cuban doesn't seem to be quite the maths-wizard some people hold him for.

(please forgive any spelling- or grammar-errors, English isn't my native language..)

Never had a reason to dislike Cuban. Attempting to help MS in their effort to control the internet? NOW I do...

gee that sounds alot like what that news corp dude said he was going to do to try and help out bing... funny that google gives you a shit ton of organic traffic and bing gives you none a mil and no visitors isnt worth the money. on my blog i get about 200 visits a month from google and (drum roll) 2 from bing... bing may have some good features but it seems like finding good articles isnt one of those things. wolfahm|alpha equation solver and comparison thing is way cool but im sure google will have its own very soon (same thing with bings lame twitter search)

And BEG Avery Johnson to come back and work for a mil.

Killing Google is not is anyones best interest, competition is. If Cuban really wants to make an impact he should start a search engine that will be committed enough to actually compete with them.

supposedly the google bot. It will respect robot.txt, so it is possible to prevent your site from being indexed