Digg and MSN, Happy Together Without Google?

This week’s big news was the firing of Google and hiring of MSN by leading news aggregator and social bookmarking web site Digg.com. For the next three years MSN will be responsible for serving up display and contextual ads to Digg’s estimated 17 million unique visitors per month using Microsoft’s adCenter platform.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson describes the reason for the change-up as this:

“We at Digg couldn’t think of a better partner to get to where we need to go. They’re a young ad service, they’re innovative, they’re willing to work with us on the cutting edge.”

That’s very nice and probably the first time in a long time the words “young” and “innovative” have been associated with Microsoft but really…why DID Digg fire Google?

So far as I can find from searching the Internet, the firing of Google by a partner company is a bit unprecedented. In fact, a Google query for “partner firing Google” returns this somewhat hilarious suggestion: Did You Mean: partner hiring Google?” As if to suggest that “firing” is really not even a valid possibility.

As for getting a response from Google themselves as to what might have gone wrong with Digg, the Google blogs and Matt Cutts posted innocuous entries like keyword stuffing examples, and a video that some Googlers posted online about how they love Gmail. Though Google and its employees are probably embargoed, it’s been hard to get a bead on what has led up to this historical firing of Google.

In all likelihood, the ValleyWag gossip blog is probably correct - MSN gave Digg a large amount of cash upfront that they couldn’t refuse. However, and this is pure speculation on my part, I tend to agree with the WebProNews article from last December, Google To Bust Digg’s Block? about Google giving Digg a competitive run for its money. In his article, Jason Lee Miller talks about how Google and in particular tools like Google Reader, could be poised to enter their own products into the content-sharing, bookmarking and voting field.

This got me wondering about what will happen to Google partners as Google products begin to look more and more like their own? Google Video and Google Reader are just 2 examples. Business sense will probably prevail in that Google will not want to reinvent the wheel if they can just buy the wheel, but the break between Digg and Google indicates that a shift is taking place among the search industry giants. The recent spate of engineers leaving Google may also speak to the continual wearing down of Google’s pristine reputation.

In an article published in the New York Times on August 24th, 2005, called Relax, Bill Gates; It’s Google’s Turn as the Villain, Gary Rivlin contended that Google was already replacing Microsoft as the “evil” empire, quoting:

“I like and respect the Google guys,” Mr. Lent (who once worked with Brin and Page at Stanford) “but let’s just say that their ultimate aim seems to me to be, ‘One Google under Google, for which it stands.”

As Google criticism grows from bloggers to corporate CEOs, online advertisers and marketers should be aware of how the industry players like MSN and Yahoo may be jostling for the lead. In the search wars keep your search companies close and keep those that they buy even closer.

Related Links:

Official Microsoft Press Release About the New Partnership

Digg CEO Jay Adelson’s Blog Post

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