Real Estate - The Next Battle Ground For Internet Dominance?

[austtr]

I'm wondering if the web's next big battle for dominance has snuck by under the radar.

We all know Google's web dominance has allowed it to monetize search pages pretty much at will without any real challenge to how it does that…. EU notwithstanding. Some time ago Google bought Auction.com and it seemed obvious that would become the platform for their inevitable assault on the online real estate market.

But it has now been reported that Move.com, one of the other major online real estate players, has been bought by Google's arch nemesis, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Murdoch's beef dates back to when Google did not have pay him royalties for using his media content to create news snippets in Google News… and pretty much covers everything since then.

So do we now have two potential adversaries, both ultra heavyweights in terms of global influence and and lobbying clout, both about to try and corner the humungous market of online real estate? Will Eric and Rupert duke it out for dominance and Wall St kudos or will Google do a deal with Murdoch that guarantees his operation an equal sharing of search page exposure?

How do you see this playing out?

[goodroi]

I'd expect a battle royale before I would expect a negotiated truce, but that is just my guess.

[Shepherd]

Real estate is a tricky beast. Most of the control still sits with the association of realtors. Couple that with the laws regarding commissions and licensing and we'll likely see the big money out of this battleground in the future.

[jmccormac]

Murdoch has a long experience of dealing with power. Google has managed to move from being a startup that was everyone's friend and part of the industry to being the evil empire, (a position that was once occupied by Microsoft). There may be a lot more negative stories about Google and key players appearing if Murdoch is serious. On the other hand, Murdoch's attempts at online investment have not worked out well. In a way, for the real estate business, I hope both of them lose because they are both toxic.

Regards...jmcc

[austtr]

Most of the control still sits with the association of realtors. Couple that with the laws regarding commissions and licensing

I doubt very much that Google or Murdoch will be interested in getting involved at the transaction level.... they are not realtor companies. They won't be interested in selling real estate, just advertising it and possibly running a "one size fits all" system of online auctions. In both scenarios it will be a case of pay to play for the local realtor to get exposure of their listings.

It's easy to visualize a future where a real estate search on Google will result in a SERP that leads off with a link to Google Realty (or whatever name they give it), just like with Google Hotels is inserted into the SERP for hotel searches.... or Google Flights or Google Shopping etc etc.

If Google try to use their position of search dominance to do this and Murdoch feels he is being denied fair opportunity, then expect the proverbial to hit the fan.

[Shepherd]

just like with Google Hotels is inserted into the SERP for hotel searches.... or Google Flights or Google Shopping etc etc.

An auction play maybe, anything else is not likely. They can't advertise real estate without data, without listings, and aside from fsbo's, the association controls the listings, the data. As soon as google, Murdoch, Yahoo, Trulia, Zillow become a threat the association will pull the rug out from under them.

I've been in this space for 25 years, I've seen a lot of moves made and thwarted ;)