Google squelches Sharogle

July 17, 2007 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

picture-29.pngGoogle has killed a valiant effort by a company that wanted to let you partake of Google’s profits.

Until six days ago, a company called Sharogle was giving you a portion of the ad revenue Google gets from your searches.

It let you create an account and then start searching the web from within Sharogle’s site — and start making money.

It was working great. Essentially, it would give you a portion of the referral fee it was getting from Google, by acting like any other publisher. It ran AdSense-looking links beneath the white-labeled Googlely search box and above the Googlely web search results.

You could cash out at $10 with PayPal and at $25 with check. Alas, it was too good to last. Google stopped running ads on the site six days ago. Sharogle says it is looking for other partners.

picture-28.png Sharogle has made its point. In its FAQ, it says “.. people who contribute to the success of any company should be able to earn a portion of the revenues, which is why we share revenues with users.”

But, oh Sharogle, how much money could one possibly make? “The overall success of the company will determine the amount of money you make. For the sake of justification some of the top search engines make billions of dollars per year.”

And, how does Sharogle make money? Why, “from sponsored results just like all search engines do. It’s a proven and reliable business model.”

Amazon similarly pulled the plug on Zlio’s populist scheme, where that company collected a referral fee from Amazon for sending over users, then split the fee with those users. However, Zlio has been able to grow its model with other partners, and just closed another round of funding. We’re not sure that Sharogle has such a free-standing business.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • ryan
    this could be the dumbest thing I have ever seen. If you want to make some of the google profits why not just sign up for an adsense account and not have to share it with a third party.
  • zilpho
    Ryan,

    If it was dumb why did they become so popular One (1) month after launch? I don't think you understood the idea. What they did with google was they rotated your adsense account so when members search you stand a chance of receiving clicks on your ads. It was in fact a smart idea, however google decided that it was against their adsense policy and blocked ads from the site. Sources said that google didn't like the "incentive to search" idea, but makes me wonder how companies like blingo.com are still able to use google search since they offer incentives to search big time.
  • Ben Baker
    Wouldn't this be an incentive for Users to commit click fraud??

    Duh????
  • Molly
    @ben baker
    The users wouldn't get paid more if they clicked on ads, because they weren't their own ads being displayed. No user sees their own ads.

    Also, sharogle is relaunching using a different paid search engine.
  • zilpho
    Ben,

    You were not clicking on your own ads, in fact when you made a search you had no idea whose ads were showing up.

    Eric said "Google has killed a valiant effort by a company that wanted to let you partake of Google’s profits."

    I think you should rephrase this statement because the site is not dead. As far as I know they are forming new partnerships to make it work.
  • Chris
    Just because one has a comment does not justify their rationality.

    All Sharogle was doing was rotate Adsense for search and keep 50% of the rotations for themselves. Their argument that people who use and make search engines successful must get a cut out of it does not make much sense.

    Their operation clearly gives a user to click on someone else's Adsense for search to earn credits.

    In the end it is the Advertiser who loses. If Sharogle wants to provide a search experience. it can merely redirect their site to Google. Everyone knows where to go to search something.
  • zilpho
    Chris says "All Sharogle was doing was rotate Adsense for search and keep 50% of the rotations for themselves. Their argument that people who use and make search engines successful must get a cut out of it does not make much sense."

    Because?

    Chris says: "In the end it is the Advertiser who loses. If Sharogle wants to provide a search experience. it can merely redirect their site to Google. Everyone knows where to go to search something."

    And how would they generate income for their users? What would be the reason to even have a website that is directing all searches to a site that evereyone already knows about?
  • tips
    Perfect site :-) I will recommend it to all my friends and fans