Microsoft and Murdoch teaming up against Google?

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 24 November 2009 07:59

IT Industry - Market

For months, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of global media giant News Corp, has been complaining about his publications' content showing up in Google searches. Now Microsoft is reportedly offering to pay publishers, including News Corp, to block Google searches in favor of Bing listings.

Murdoch has been complaining about Google "stealing" New Corp's copyrighted material at least since last April. And earlier this month he told SkyNews Australia that he expected his company to start charging for access to material.

Now comes word that News Corp has been talking with Microsoft about a plan for the latter to pay News Corp to make its sites inaccessible to Google.

According to the Financial Times, the discussions were initiated by News Corp, but Microsoft has also approached other publishers with the idea.

One question raised by the talks is whether Google would start paying publishers as well, in order to keep being able to include their material in search results. As far as that goes, though, the Financial Times quotes Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director, as having told a conference that news content "economically [is] not a big part of how we generate revenue.

A related question is whether Microsoft is offering News Corp and others placement on Bing as an additional incentive to "de-list" themselves from Google. No one confirmed that explicitly but another article in the Financial Times quoted a publishing executive as calling payment to be included in search results "a very slippery slope."

On the other hand, last month Harvard's Neiman Journalism Lab reported that Associated Press chief executive Tom Curley told some conference attendees that the AP was negotiating with Microsoft, saying that "We are only going to work with those who use our principles."

One of those principles, says the Neiman report, is making sure that original news sources (such as the AP) rank higher in search results than sites that merely pick up news from elsewhere.