News Corp to block Google and other search engines
In a candid interview with Sky News, News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch stated that soon he will begin pulling his news content from Google,and other online search engines. This move comes as Murdoch says he wishes to move to a subscription news model. The electronic model of a news paper. In other words, what this man wants is everyone pays a subscription fee in order to access any types of news. The sad thing is in the video interview, he says his News Corp is prepared to take this thing to a whole new level by using threats of lawsuits, and more aggressive court proceedings to get other news networks to fall in line with his plan.
In Rupert Murdoch’s own words he states in the video interview:
“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them,” Murdoch reportedly said. “That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.” – Rupert Murdoch
I think Murdoch really needs to think about his position for a minute. In fact, pulling his info from the likes of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Ask will be a huge blow to his traffic numbers. In fact, Google is a household name and, and his news service will suffer quite dearly. Even though he says he would rather have a few paying visitors then a bunch of free ones, he should have never based his online news on advertising revenue to big with. The fact of the matter is that no online contextual advertising is going to turn you huge profits in the long run, however, a company as big a News Corp should be capable of selling Ad spaces on their web sites standalone for a monthly fee just a classified ad in a newspaper.
If Murdoch and News Corp take this route, I personally hope Google penalizes every single web site news or not news that Murdoch and News Corp have anything to do with. In fact, bury them in the supplemental index Google. If you don’t know, the Google Supplemental index is the equivalent of the Internet purgatory. I see this whole thing as just another step in the direction non-free Internet. ISP’s want billing by the byte, now News Corp wants to charge for the news, and soon online video will all but be blocked by ISP’s without a subscription package. The writing is on the wall.
The good news is Google, and Microsoft are in fact not in favor of such measures. Bing is driven by its rewards programs and other things, however, Microsoft is not going to make much of a profit by being the excusive for News Corp content like the Wall Street Journal. Microsoft is not going to make any big time money paying for thar garbage. Microsoft is smart enough to know that competing with Google must be done in the cloud with online web applications, not worthless News Corp garbage.
I personally hope Murdoch goes through with this. In my opinion, it will be good riddance to bad rubbish. The guy is a total clown, and Murdoch and News Corp completely ruined Myspace. It is now nothing but a worthless Internet junk heap.
The funny think however is that Rupert Murdoch may go down in history, in a bad away. As another blogger put it:
This is the perfect way for the blogosphere to become the news carriers of the world. As soon as people have to pay to access the articles in online newspapers, they will turn to more workable solutions with more diverse opinions. Murdoch could go down in history as the man who killed off the newspaper!
The above quote could not be more true! He may kill off the newspaper. As when News Corp made this announcement, A spokesman from Google made the follow quote:
“Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute. Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.”
I say way to go Google. I say there are many other news sources that will be more than happy to have their content indexed and made available on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and other search engines. I will welcome the day when Murdoch and News Corp sponsored drivel they call news is gone from the Internet. After all, face it Google is the number one finder of information, with Yahoo being second. Since Microsoft Bing and Yahoo are combining, they will be second….News corp de-indexing itself and going to a paid model I do not believe will go well in their favor.
In fact, such a move will just power the blogosphere even more, so bloggers, it looks like we are getting our chance. At least there would really be more opinions then just a few. As blogs have a much more diverse set of opinions for one to weigh on, and overall I think people would be better informed any how.
I will celebrate the day News Corp and Murdoch’s garbage is gone from Google.
