Ask.com CEO less than enthusiastic for Y!'s pay for inclusion model

Is Yahoo Preparing For A Takeover? | Zoomstart — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:12:04 +0000

[...] Since then, there’s been a fair amount of chatter about how Yahoo is selling paid inclusion into it’s organic search results. There’s the odd person that defends this, but most people see it as a bad idea. Rob Watts over at Yack Yack spells out a lot of the reasons why it’s a bad idea. [...]

Ask.com CEO less than enthusiastic for Y!'s pay for inclusion model

robwatts — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:58:45 +0000

Hi Shane

Thanks for the comment

Good point, I wonder too why they feel a need to do what on the face of things, seems pretty dumb, you’d think they’d at least try and do something a little more innovative – all that cash all that access to creativity and all they can come up with is a half baked pie full of uncooked chicken pieces.

Ask.com CEO less than enthusiastic for Y!'s pay for inclusion model

Shane — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:48:21 +0000

Companies do stupid things when they need to raise a lot of cash. This is a cash-grab, pure and simple.

Maybe they’re worried about a takeover bid. And maybe they see a take-over as inevitable and they’re just trying to boost the earnings and the stock price.

Ask.com CEO less than enthusiastic for Y!'s pay for inclusion model

robwatts — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:16:46 +0000

Hey Becky,

The short answer to your question is as you probably worked out already, it doesn’t!

As you so succinctly point out in your blog, there is no philosophical incorporation at all. Its about profit and having the economic ability to play in the space. There is no democracy, if anything its Darwinian.

Ive always felt that these gateways to the internet Yahoo Google MSN should be subject to some kind of restrictions/monitoring. They literally have a triopoly on this whole internet shebang. If you have a website or a view and they don’t like it then you could pretty much see yourself go to dust. You are at the behest of a search engineer a mere click away from deletion.

The thing is though I guess, is that its difficult to wrestle with a multi billion dollar giant. There lies a lot of lobby dollars

Ask.com CEO less than enthusiastic for Y!'s pay for inclusion model

Becky — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:02:53 +0000

I blogged on this Web 2.0 nonsense today. I am wondering how this concept of paid ranking fits into that democratic all inclusive vision of the web. I understand the bottom line realities. But how is it incorporated in the vision philosophically? Or maybe they don’t try to reconcile it. Does not seem very huggy to me.

~Becky