tag:,2008:/1/tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917- 2008-08-07T05:08:48Z Comments for Google, MS, Y!, Ask: 20%+ revenue from toolbars? Movable Type 4.1 tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917 2006-07-18T23:13:49Z 2007-12-16T23:16:09Z Google, MS, Y!, Ask: 20%+ revenue from toolbars? Markus Frind is one of the more disruptive (and therefore interesting) bloggers to emerge this year. He's the guy who burst onto the scene with claims that he's making $10,000 per day off his online dating site PlentyOfFish.com. I actually met Markus in person last month at the Supernova conference and I can confirm he's... Richard MacManus http://www.readwriteweb.com google toolbarMarkus Frind is one of the more disruptive (and therefore interesting) bloggers to emerge this year. He's the guy who burst onto the scene with claims that he's making $10,000 per day off his online dating site PlentyOfFish.com. I actually met Markus in person last month at the Supernova conference and I can confirm he's a very smart cookie (and a nice person to boot). Anyway his latest post makes the claim that the big Internet companies make upwards of 20% of their entire revenues from toolbars. Here's how Markus summed it up:

"Toolbars are the major battlefield that NO one wants to talk about. Everything being done today by Microsoft, Yahoo and Google is to get their toolbars on peoples machines. Google did a deal with Sun, Dell and firefox to push their toolbars. From the above news release I suspect Ask.com is currently getting ~30-50% of its revenues from its toolbars, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google are probably at 20%+ of revenues."

He contends that Ask.com makes 30-50% of its revenue via adware, smileycentral.com and toolbar installs - which is something that I'd love to get an official comment on by Ask.com! 

According to Markus the big Internet companies are earning over $20.00 per toolbar user per year, so it's big money when you add it all up. Still, maybe I'm naive but I find it hard to fathom how toolbars can make up 20% of a big companies revenue. What do others think?

UPDATE: I emailed Ask.com and received the following response from Scott Garell, CEO of IAC Consumer Applications and Portals. Note that the toolbar business is not in the Ask.com side of IAC, though it was previously owned by Ask Jeeves.

"Just like our competitors, you are correct in asserting that our toolbar business is very healthy. However, your assertion regarding the adware question is not correct: SmileyCentral and all FunWebProducts are unequivocally not adware or spyware. These products do not serve or facilitate contextual or pop-up ads, do not monitor the sites a user visits, do not monitor a user’s behavior on the Internet, and do not log or track keystrokes. Major anti-adware programs do not flag FunWebProducts, including those from Pest Patrol, AOL, Norton, Lavasoft, Webroot and Symantec."

Thanks Scott for the response.

]]> tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917-comment:37982 Comment from Paul Montgomery on 2006-07-18 Paul Montgomery http://tinfinger.blogspot.com Why don't you ring Ask up and ask them, Richard? They'd talk to you, big important blogger you are! :P

]]> 2006-07-19T00:00:07Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917-comment:37983 Comment from Richard MacManus on 2006-07-18 Richard MacManus http://readwriteweb.com I've already emailed them Monty ;-)

]]> 2006-07-19T00:05:15Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917-comment:37984 Comment from Dare Obasanjo on 2006-07-18 Dare Obasanjo http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog Why is this hard to fathom?

]]> 2006-07-19T01:25:37Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917-comment:37985 Comment from Markus on 2006-07-18 Markus http://www.plentyoffish.com Toolbars are the gateway to search now, how many people go to google.com and type in what they want to search for? Most people just type it into the little toolbar box now.

The toolbars don't directly make money, but what they do is reinforce the owner of the toolbar as the default search engine. Ie why should I go to microsoft.com if i can just type something in the top of this browser...

Toolbar install = Default Search Engine = $$$$$

I'm not sure if ask.com will respond, but one thing they can NOT deny is that 13% of us traffic my site gets has their smilie toolbar. When they bought the smilie company it was generating close to 100 million a year in revenues from having the toolbar ie default search. Its not like anyone would look up iwon.com and mysearch.com and actually search there.

Also its not like ask.com hasn't been in hot water about this issue before...
http://www.benedelman.org/news/050205-1.html

]]> 2006-07-19T01:37:46Z tag:72.47.210.69,2006://1.4917-comment:37986 Comment from Lucas on 2006-07-23 Lucas http://gonze.com I'm very skeptical of Scott's denials with regard to SmileyCentral and FunWebProducts. In my anecdotal experience these are widely hated by their "users". See, for example,
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/web/2003/1208web2.html, or just do a search for yourself.

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