Google News is a news outlet which most news sites submit their news to. Microsoft’s Bing is considering paying publishers to put their content in its search engine instead, and not just including it there as well as Google. I have to wonder what impact that would have on Google first of all and second of all I have to wonder if Microsoft has forgotten what search engines do?

A recent study in Germany (I won’t go into all the hairy details. If you want to read more about it you can here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/23/would-bing-switch-really-dent-google) showed that 5% of the top 10 results on Google’s first page came from news organizations. This was of course with the publishers cooperating with Google and submitting their links to them for such inclusion. Note that 5% is pretty small. And the fact that the news sources submitted doesn’t mean Google wouldn’t find and include the same sites without their help.

Wikipedia, interestly, accounts for 13% of the top results.

I don’t think Bing is going to damage Google any time soon. Their universal search, rolled out this year, maybe just the sort of thing they needed to do to keep themselves safe from such a concept. Bravo Google. You gotta give kudos where kudos is due!

Some have posed the question: Would you use Google if you knew you couldn’t find stories from certain or all news organizations? I would have to say they are jumping the gun on the question because again, whether or not the publisher submits the information or not doesn’t in any way preclude Google from including the same information if it is relevant. Would it take longer to find it? Maybe. But how much? Probably not much at all. Google has made it their business to provide the best results to searchers. That’s precisely why they do it – so you won’t go somewhere else. They are dedicated to making sure you can find what you are looking for when you type a query into their search engine.

As to Microsoft’s inability to remember what search engines do I have to wonder? If news is news – Google will be including it. Does that mean Bing won’t be unless the publishers submit their links themselves? I’m not sure the question should have been pointed out!