I’ve been thinking some more about Google’s attack on Microsoft for allegedly making its search engine the default engine on its new browser (see prior post). As Google’s Marissa Mayer puts it, “We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.” That statement seems consistent with Google’s ideals, particularly its philosophy of “always placing the interests of the user first” even when that means “resist[ing] the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value.” Google’s simply asking that Microsoft, as well, live up to Google’s ideals – that it give users the choice of which search engine to use even if that means sacrificing some shareholder value.
But what’s the most powerful and influential default setting in the search world today? It’s not – at least yet – in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It’s on Google’s home page. I would guess that a strong plurality, if not a majority, of web searches are done through Google’s home page, at least in the United States. As “Google” has become synonymous with “search,” people head to its home page as much out of habit as anything else. It is, quite simply, where you go to search the web. But Google doesn’t give you any choices when you arrive at its home page. There’s a default engine – Google’s – and it’s a default that you can’t change. There’s no choice.
If Google wants to fully live up to its ideals – to really give primacy to the goal of user choice in search – it should open up its home page to other search engines. That would be easy to do without mucking up the page or the “user experience.” You could just add a simple drop down menu that would allow users to choose whether to do a search with Google’s engine, or Microsoft’s, or Yahoo’s, or one of the other, less-well-known engines that now exist. The result would be that users get more choice as well as fuller access to the wealth of information on the web (another of Google’s goals). By enabling broader competition in search, right at the point of user access, Google would also promote innovation in search technology, again benefiting the user.
The greatest opportunity to enhance the ability of users to freely choose how they search the net lies in Google’s own backyard. Why not take advantage of it?
prisoner’s dilemma? i am pretty sure google would be up for it. lets assume just for a second that google would really give users a drop down menue to select their search engine. lets also assume that IE would also offer a free search engine choice on the msn default start page. who’d gain more in such a scenario? obviously google. simply because google is the best search engine out there. so microsoft would be nuts to follwo such an approach. and so would be google by the way – since they would most likley stand alone with such an action.
don’t assume people don’t know how to make choices. sure, 5 years ago the default start page that came with IE meant that users were stuck with it. in 2006 i doubt that there are many users left who do not know how to change their default start page. and those who still don’t know how to – well, how much value do they contribute to your business?
the web is probably the best tool when it comes to free choice. “blaming” google or msn for their strategies seems a bit pointless to me. users have free choice.
Does anyone remember when Google had links to let you try the same search on Yahoo or Altavista? Back when they actually had balls?
How many RSS, PodCast and Newsgroup applications ship pointing to their own URI by default ? I would suggest that most of them do. Are Google going to go after them also ?
As someone has previously stated, if you go to http://www.google.com using IE7 a ‘big box’ appears in the top right with a great big red arrow asking “Make Google your search engine in Internet Explorer”. I’m sure Google are going to make it as easy as possible to change the IE7 settings.
I think Google credibility as a search engine has diminished massively over the last couple of years. The proliferation of “paid for” ranking and advertising means I almost always have to skip pages before I get the results I want.
Paying for ranking in a search engine is just wrong, but hey at least they are happy. With after expenses profits of $1.52 Billion and a whole new captive market in China to look forward too… they’re on a roll.
This is only too true. Google is basically saying, ‘We don’t respect property rights. We’re worried about competing in the marketplace, so we’ll go gripe to regulators.” Give me a break!
People are not stupid. If you really want to use google, Microsoft does not and cannot force you to do otherwise. If your higher value is to just not think about it and get an operating system that integrates common functions in a reasonable way, Google, Sun Microsystems, RealNetworks and Oracle don’t want you to get it.
Google’s complaint is obsurd and this “don’t be evil” credo is getting tired. If they really want to offer users a choice how about they add a link to download IE or Opera when a user arrives at their page using Firefox in the same way they link to Firefox when I visit their page with IE. Look, I like both companies, but Google is starting to get annoying professing to be a saint one moment then ignoring their no evil motto the next.
Google isn’t really trying to live up to its ideals, or ask others too – it’s simply a corporate move from an over-valued company, that sees a different type of user choice as a direct threat to it’s revenues.
If Microsoft really wanted to attack Google, they’d simply kill JS ads by default in IE7.
2c.
Quote :
its philosophy of “always placing the interests of the user first” even when that means “resist[ing] the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value.”
Unquote.
If Google were that altruistic, you wouldn’t find the restrictive clause in the Adsense TOS that restricts users from using any other context based advertising on the same page. There really isn’t any other rationale except that it would hit their revenue stream.
Scoble-
Google is an advertising delivery mechanism to Google and to Google’s advertisers (and to Microsoft).
It’s a search engine to users (since we don’t notice the ads).
&, FYI, IE is a browser.
Its apple and oranges here folks.. I don’t believe that Google’s home page is being distributed with millions of new PCs. How hard can it be so pop up a selection box? Oh yeah, I just spent 11 hours installing a USB 2.0 TV Tuner with Media Center.. It could be VERY VERY hard for MS to get it right!!
“But Google doesn’t give you any choices when you arrive at its home page.” must be the most preposterous thing I’ve ever read (there, I always wanted to use the word preposterous in a comment). What’s next, BMW offering “choices” by suggesting a visit to Mercedes’ website on their home page? Not your best moment, I’m afraid, Nicholas.
To everyone who suggested that a user is free to type Google’s URI in the browser input field: you can trust Microsoft to make the search function so pervasive in the overall Windows user interface that in less than 2 years time few users will even start their browser to search the internet (on Windows). Meaning that there won’t be an input field to type an URI. “The browser is a threat to Microsoft? No problem, we’ll make do without a browser wherever possible.”
Oh come on folks, changing the search engine in ie7 is so stupidly easy this is ridiculous.
It even provides a picklist of the common search engines.
Here are some screenshots demonstrating IE7’s search:
http://tredosoft.com/internet_explorer_7_search_providers
All you do is click the arrow next to the search box and then select the search engine. The blundering idiots used by google’s test group clearly did not understand the menu option “Change search defaults” would in fact change the search defaults.
The premise is factually flawed anyway. IE7 respects the default (Google in many cases) of IE6. This protects the money that GOOG spent to buy off OEMs and to promote their toolbar. GOOG should be happy about that. Imagine the alternative. Suppose YHOO convinced a user to set YHOO as default in IE6, and then first launch of IE6 says “Are you *sure* you don’t want Google instead?”. That would have YHOO crying foul, and wouldn’t seem rather unfair to me.
Doesn’t anybody in the MSFT camp get the gist of this? The point is the operating system comes WITH IE (soon to be 7) and that the experience out of the box is the user using Windows with IE with MSN Live. That leverage is the exact scenario that caused the court to rule on abuse of a monopoly position, and it’s the fundamental aspect of the EU case.
For a user, even on a Mac, to use Google, it’s a choice by somebody that doesn’t help Apple directly. Apple doesn’t own Google. Microsoft DOES own MSN Live. Firefox doesn’t own Google. Firefox doesn’t come by default on your new copy of Windows. IE does.
Quit dissecting the argument to a single product. Nobody I know gripes about Microsoft competing with any of their stand-alone products that aren’t bundled with the OS. Office wallops competitors with capability and/or intertia, but it’s not bundled with all these leverage points.
If Microsoft didn’t have such a horribly history of abusive business practice, this wouldn’t be an issue. It wouldn’t be an issue if they didn’t have 85% of the browser and 90%+ of the desktops. The point is that situation exists, and it stifles legitimate competition. Google is pointing out that this is a further extension of the practices that Microsoft was found guilty of. Address THAT without mixing a dozen irrelevant detailed metaphors that don’t take into account the court rulings or drawing parallels with Google that doesn’t have an enforced monopoly.
In fact, why isn’t Walmart required to sell Target’s merchandise in their stores? Shouldn’t consumers be given a CHOICE? (other than the choice they’d already made, that is, of driving to Walmart’s store in the first place). And really, if I go to the opera, why couldn’t I listen to a Broadway musical instead? Who says the world has to use common sense, anyway?
And speaking of… There’s a difference between being a monopoly and being popular, even if both notions can be expressed in percentages.
I can’t believe that people are still whining about MS’s “unfair competitive advantage” installing applications by default on Windows, like Windows Media Player. It’s a joke.
If your business model is reliant on commercial sales of a product that competes with something MS gives away free on their platform then I would suggest that you either reconsider your market strategy or make your product massively feature rich and dirt cheap. If Joe/Janet User need features not shipped in the Windows bundled default then make your product appealing to them on price and ability and you’ll get some sales, but don’t expect a huge slice of the cake.
Innovate, don’t recycle.
I’d just like to point out that Firefox allows an extensive and unrestricted list of extensions. One of the more popular extensions is CustomizeGoogle ( https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=743 ) which adds links directly to Google result pages to perform the same search on 11 alternative sites including MSN, Yahoo, Ask, Lycos, Altavista, Technorati, Wikipedia, etc. Would Microsoft ever allow a similar extension for IE which altered MSN’s results? Seriously.
Also, while Google is the default search box parameter in Firefox, it’s a matter of exactly two clicks to change that (Click the G icon next to the search box->Select new search engine), without having to go into any settings. To change the default in IE7 is 4 clicks into their settings, not from the ‘front page’, according to Microsoft. While that may seem like no big deal to most tech-minded people, tech-minded people are in fact the minority of Windows users in the world. Those who would have a big deal with it are the moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, and other people who have difficulty even changing their default homepage in IE, which is also 4 clicks (Tools->Internet Options->Use Current->Ok), or doing Windows Updates which is usually 4 clicks as well (Tools->Windows Update->Express->Install Updates) – 8 or so clicks if they have to update the WindowsUpdate ActiveX control.
As numerous people above have pointed out, Google does not own any browser (nor an OS with 90%+ market saturation on which that browser is not only installed but integrated into by default). Firefox/Safari could just as easily set the default to Yahoo or MSN if that were the search engine they felt best suited their users. Google has already stated they would have no problem offering users a choice upon installation in ANY browser. Microsoft on the other hand dismisses that idea out-of-hand. Who seriously cares about user choice again?
This all boils down to the inherent conflict of interest Microsoft continually seeks to exploit for itself with regards to IE.
Also, with regards to people trying to justify Microsoft by saying IE7 inherits the default search engine set in previous versions of IE: I have to use a 3rd party application to change the default search engine in IE6. There is no option anywhere in the settings area to do that. The only way it gets changed from MSN is if Compaq, Dell, etc preset it differently or I install a toolbar or application which lets me change it (such as the old Giant Anti-Spyware program – it’s current incarnation as Windows Defender curiously removed that option from the program after Microsoft bought out Giant).
Oh, but there is one button under the Programs tab in Options to “Reset web settings” which will “reset Internet Explorer to the default home and search pages”.
Guys.
Google has nothing to worry about. Want to change the search to Google? No problem, go to their web page (I mean, you’ve heard about it, right? Who hasn’t?).
In IE7, when you do, this is what you get:
click for small graphic