Why searching is free
Posted by multippt
We never need to pay for finding stuff online. Searching is an invaluable tool - the most trafficked sites are search engines. Have they ever placed a price tag on search? No. They can’t place a price on it, so the best possible price would have to be - FREE! However, Google and Yahoo still earns billions from search, even though the main service itself is provided at no cost. Though, search itself does grant those who provide it with unmeasureable power - enough to actually counter the fact that searching is free.
Sources of cash without cashing in on search
Making search free completely eliminates the searching part of search engines from the profit list. However, providing other services will make up for it - by a lot. In the end, search engines still profit, though indirectly. However, if Google does charge a fee of $0.01 per search, it will net billions per month (given that there are millions of searches a day).
1. Imagine, the information collected
Information indexed is incredibly useful. So, Google can be said to know almost most of the visible Internet. Such information is useful to many people, granting a especially important feature of websites - traffic. With traffic comes ??? and finally profit! Though, collecting that much information takes money out of anyone’s pocket, and is more of an investment. There is a reason why Google has not 1 or 2, but over 50 datacenters (plus, a mountain full of bandwidth). Unless you had over $100,000 worth of funds like Google, getting a private search engine running is bound to be problematic.
Aside from traffic, some of these information is so valuable that people pay for it. Well, at least no one is doing it yet, but it’s known that Google is observing the information it collects - which is inclusive of web pages, and traffic information, but also visitor information as well.
2. In-site advertising
Webmasters will do anything to get traffic. Hoping to tap into the traffic of the giants themselves (traffic beyond anyone’s imagination), they will pay cash to get their site exposed as much as possible. Google AdWords is one of Google’s main sources of income. Advertising via AdWords is known to give plentiful traffic, but to Google it takes no cost to implement (since the ads appear on Google), giving it instant profit.
3. Advertising networks
Search engines bring in traffic, making it easier to establish advertising networks just like what Yahoo and Google has done (Live search has yet to do so). Google AdSense brings in money to the ordinary site owner. It brings in money for Google as well. After all, isn’t the advertising rates more than the payout rate? Implementing a super network like AdSense isn’t all that impossible for Google - in fact, no one actually minds participating in it (ah, the power of money).
4. Shares
Search engines turned business. People buy a stake on a search engine, and hope to earn from it (search engines are getting popular after all, making them a nice target). This is the main source of juice powering Yahoo and Google. Who wins? Google, Yahoo, and co.
5. Sparse competition
Fancy running a search engine? Well, good luck, because you will need it. Search engines are hard to maintain - hence there are not many search engines around. So, if you are at the top, you will remain there. Similarly for the opposite. Great for Google and Yahoo who were at the top of the pile since the Internet bubble. If you are the top, you have authoratian powers, and have the ability to command those who seek forth your services (because there are few alternatives), propaganda for money.
