Redistributing those excess search profits

Bill Gates thinks there are excess profits in search and suggests that users should be paid for searching.

No sooner do I read that than I stumble across Blingo, a Google search affiliate whose consumer proposition is this:

1. We pick a bunch of random winning times.
2. Search at the right time and you win. No registration required.
3. Then tell us where to send your prize.

It sounds totally 1999 ("Get paid to click on ads!"), but there's something here. I'm no Wall Street quant, but Google's outsized profits scream "arbitrage opportunity" to me.

Comments

[David]

Is this a case of Long Tail or Deep Pockets?

[Gary Potter]

Chris, sorry but I don't get your reference to an "arbitrage opportunity". Just wondering what you meant.

[alex]

what is this sillyness. just charge for ads less!

[Darrel]

I had similiar thoughts, though I think mine were a bit more cynical:

http://mnteractive.com/archive/web-21-right-around-the-corner/

[Brett Morgan]

You know what those outsize profits scream to me? A company that has gone further down the road of mastering information overload than anyone else. Paying me $5 to search doesn't help me any when all i am trying to do is find the documentation on an old java library.

If other players want to join in the game, all they have to do is hire usability professionals to help reduce the complexity of their user interfaces.

Apple seems to be the only other tech company that takes user interface design seriously, and look at it's outsize iPod sales. Does that scream arbitrage opportunity to you as well?

[Chris Anderson]

Brett,

All credit to Google for innovation and execution. But given the commodity nature of what they do--organizing the world's information--I think we can expect a host of imitators, many offering similar services at lower prices or some other switching incentive, which is what Blingo appears to be doing. Right now Google is getting monopoly-sized rents for a non-monopoly. That's what seems unsustainable to me.

[Brad]

Sounds a lot like, someone throwing in the towel. What is the easiest way to fend-off a rising competitor? Turn their core-competency into a cost center. Just, I am not so sure this approach works when you give your core-product away for free. Google's advertisers pay for quality results, not for click-happy internet users looking for a pay check.

Let's put this one in the marginal ideas bag Bill.

[chris]

what is most entertaining about this whole get paid to click model is that it is nothing more than microsoft trying to find yet another way to be relevant in today's internet arena.

[Mark Baraniecki]

As an active user of Adwords, I need user friendliness as well as price and coverage. I find Overture slow, clunky and irritating and hence probably don't use it as much as I could.
I wouldn't call Google a monopolist. Like Dell and Amazon they just compete more effectively in an open market.