Comcast Considers Breaking Up with Google

Google edged out Microsoft to win a big AOL advertising deal in late 2005. However, it seems that Microsoft now has another opportunity to take a shot at Google, the company that is causing the most headaches for the Windows giant.

Comcast Corp. is reportedly unsatisfied by its current deal with Google to use its search engine service. The two companies are nearing the end of a three-year deal, which will expire late 2007.

Comcast.net is the site in question, and received about 17 million unique visitors in February, which placed it at number 33 in the U.S. according to comScore Media Metrix. Comcast also indicated that 70% of its 11.5 million high-speed Internet subscribers visit Comcast.net.

Under the current contract, Google is expected to pay Comcast $70 million this year, but it seems that Comcast wants to push that figure up to at least $100 million, and it may have enough bargaining power to do so. Comcast is one of Google’s largest sources of search queries, and is the number one cable company in the U.S.

If Microsoft were to win this deal, Comcast.net users would see a Live Search box instead of a Google search box on the site.

A Microsoft win would also signal yet another chink in Google’s armor to those that would want to read it that way. Though Google is more than used to these close races, it is hard to deny that losing Comcast would be, at the very least, a symbolic indication of the search engine’s declining dominance.

On the other hand, another Google victory would be yet another blow to Microsoft’s as-of-yet futile attempts to catch up to the search monster.

Comcast is also taking bids to manage advertising on its site, and so far Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL have responded. This would include the management of the site’s growing online video ad inventory.

This could just be a shrewd bargaining move on Comcast’s part, but there is a visible amount at stake here. Whatever the case, losing Comcast wouldn’t mean as much to Google as a victory would mean for any of the other suitors involved. And in the end, Comcast will come out the winner.

Sources:

http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/
03/19/comcast-flirts-with-microsoft-teases-google

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070319/wr_nm/
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