It is no secret that Microsoft is doing whatever it can to eat away at Google’s immense market share of the search market, with Bing being its most ambitious effort yet. Well, it seems the battle just got a whole lot dirtier, as The Financial Times has uncovered news that Microsoft has approached several news content providers, offering them money if they “de-index” their sites from Google.
Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about for-pay news distribution models on the internet, with News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch at the forefront. He has threatened with legal action to prevent Google from “stealing” articles published in his newspapers.
It appears Microsoft is taking this opportunity of turmoil to strike a blow at Google. Even though it was News Corp. that first approached Microsoft about the plan, The Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has approached other news content providers by itself. Both News Corp. and Microsoft declined to comment.
Even though Google didn’t have anything to say about this specific story, it did try to downplay the importance of news listings for Google. “Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue,” Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director, told an audience during a conference last week.
While we like to think this is all about search engines, the stakes are much higher for news content providers. Many of them have been struggling for a long time now trying to make profit from the internet, and with the printed media bleeding subscribers and sales, they need some other way to make revenue. When the internet was just a tool to get new readers, content providers had no problems with it – but now that the internet is more and more turning into the primary source for news, the printed media suffers.
If this battle persists, it could be the printed media that benefit, receiving sacks of money from Microsoft and Google.
Thats business in the US for you.
“Why spend money to improve your product when you can spend money to hurt your competitor’s product.”
The two are not mutually exclusive and I’m sure Microsoft will be able to afford both at the same time.
Hurting your competitor is every day business. Sometimes with commercials (Apple, Verizon, etc.) and sometimes through stealing customers or content providers by providing financial incentives.
I don’t see anything out of ordinary here. Microsoft is buying exclusive content, no different from exclusive games on consoles.
Is it all to us, as in end-users’ benefit? Well, that is debatable, but generally speaking the more heated the competition the better. I don’t like a Google monopoly on search as much as I don’t like a Microsoft monopoly on Operating Systems.
Edited 2009-11-23 15:41 UTC
While I have no real objection to google somehow loosing marketshare by competition, I do have a problem with the internet becoming less open. I do not want to see sections of the internet becoming walled off behind bing or google or whoever pays the most money. Heck stuff like this is what people made people scared of a search monopoly in the first place, they just never though it wouldn’t come from the guy in first. If this deal of goes through I won’t be using Bing. Though as aside if this actually happened I don’t think I would notice without being told, I don’t search for news corp websites in the search engine, I search for current stories and go to the ones that are near the top of the list, whoever they may be, if I wanted a specific site I would have gone to that site first and not bothered with the search engine.
Also I’m wondering how much Microsoft is gonna have to pay these guys, their business model is dying because the ad market has changed, not because of google search or google news (google ad sense on the other hand…) the money Mircosoft hands out is either going to be a drop in the bucket compared to their losses from dropping ad revenue and subscribers, or Microsoft will end up bankrolling the entire news industry, not just for America but for Europe as well since they have been just as mad at ‘google’ for ‘killing’ their business.. That could create its own problems with Microsoft having an unreasonable amount of control over the news industry. I am way more worried about all of this than google’s search monopoly, they just sell ads and have no financial interest in who tops the search results, with Bing there will be a lot of money changing hands.
> If this deal of goes through I won’t be using Bing.
Hyperbole, especially when stories like this concern Microsoft. I suppose you have already stopped using Google, have you? Because NYT, a vast amount of financial information, premium content etc. are already accessible through Google, while not freely or openly available. Ever noticed how Google news takes you to AP stories but you cannot access the same content through other search engines?
> That could create its own problems with Microsoft having an unreasonable amount of control over the news industry.
Microsoft (or any entity for that matter) is not powerful enough to hold any significant control over news media on the Internet, which is designed to evade control. They could be just a minor inconvenience to Google and nothing more.
I agree that was unjustifiable hyperbole, mostly because I don’t use bing now, so my vow to never use them if they do this is pretty hollow and childish. Regarding the AP issue, didn’t google just buy access to the AP news feed like every other news organization in the country. I have no issue with paywalls even if I don’t like them myself. If Murdock wants to put all his stuff behind a paywall fine, its a very good way to accurately value your content. The wsj has managed to do well, because they do produce valuable content. Its the segregation of content that is usually freely available that bothers me, it undermines the entire purpose of search engines, though I would say that most of my objections are from the possible reprocussions of the deal and not strictly the deal itself, I don’t think the government should stop the deal or regulate it or anything. Its just that this deal holds no benefit to the consumer, and so as a consumer I don’t like it. The possible influence Microsoft will hold over the news industry depends entirely on how much money is going to be changing hands. If you don’t believe Murdock and therefore NewsCorp can be bought then we are operating under some pretty different world views. Obviously there is now way Mircosoft could have such influence over every news organization, there are just too many of them, but as Fox News shows, sometimes you only need one to manipulate the conversation.
I would have to agree to not wanting to use Bing.
It did a few times, but I am not happy with the results.
I feel a bit like getting custom seelcted rubbish reminding me on the stuff I would find through portal sites like MSN or YAhoo. I feel a lot better servered with Google still – MS will dumb down search results, that is what I am afraid of.
Of course I am pragmatic. If there is something I can’t find with G., I ‘d look at Bing — but it is far too early to see how this pans out. Lets see what Google got up their sleeves in reply, should we? Also, it might simply terribly backfire on them as it is – we don’t know.
Microsoft knows the writing is on the wall for selling OSes and Office software… it’s not useful to update your OS and Office only every 5 years or so and Microsoft’s business is built on a three year turn. If they can’t lock customers into subscribing to software, they’ll go the “XBox Live” route and have you subscribe to USE your computer at all… they’ll get this by tying up as much content so you HAVE to subscribe.
I think you’ve got that backwards. Without content to index, Google’s business is ZILCH. Zip. Nada. It doesn’t exist. But here’s the problem: Google doesn’t want to pay NewsCorp — or practically anyone else — for the content that makes Google rich. If I were a content provider as vast as NewsCorp, I’d tell Google to scr*w themselves, and try to work an exclusive deal with another search engine — just like NewsCorp is doing. Believe me: This will get Google’s attention. It’s going to have to start sharing the revenue stream for premium content, whether it likes it or not.
Tom,
I think you’ve got it wrong. Without exposure by google, any website is ZILCH. zip. Nada. The *primary* reference to commercial websites is Google. Google. Google. Without google, any commercial website can expect it’s traffic to drop significantly. Google is the dog. Everybody else are the tails. If you want to make money on the net you need to talk to Google. Here’s an idea: why not ask Thom how much traffic to osnews.com comes from Google?
You’re missing the point. Newspapers are complaining that click-throughs from Google aren’t translating into revenue. It doesn’t matter how many people click-through from Google, if they aren’t paying the rent. What newsmen want is a way to monetize, and Microsoft is reportedly offering them that. Even if the traffic goes down, they still get more than they were getting from Google. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, it’s unlikely that Google will allow Microsoft to establish exclusive ties to NewsCorp and other commercial news orgs. It doesn’t want to take the chance that Microsoft could cut it out of premium news content.
I think you are missing the point.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2751572.htm
What is worse for Microsoft, the more news sources that it pays to remove themselves from Google, the more it costs Microsoft, and the better off are those news sources that get all the hits because they stick with Google.
Edited 2009-11-24 08:52 UTC
LOL. Yeah, let’s see how far it gets them when they can’t just repost AP, NewsCorp, content because they’ve become walled gardens.
A bit peculiar, that argument. If you were a content provider and there would be no Google to deliver your content as results to user queries, then many users wouldn’t know about your content. We’re well past that age of the Internet where a few dozen sites provided contents that everyone knew about. Yes, you could advertise in printed media, tv, or street ads, but that wouldn’t be as effective. Telling your cash cow to screw itself would mean screwing yourself, which I don’t think you’re really after.
Most news sites on the Web are fed by a handful of premium news sources (AP, NewsCorp, etc). There is clearly synergy among those organizations to adjust the way that they’ve been distributing/licensing the news to downstream sites. When that happens, everybody that feeds on them will be affected. At best, they have to pay AP, NewsCorp et al (which is not a bad business); at worst, they don’t get the news feeds anymore, AP, NewsCorp make their money through walled gardens, Google doesn’t have anything to index (or indexes lower-quality news), and news search is driven through Bing. Moreover, the blogosphere, which primarily feeds on premium news and links directly to articles, would no longer be able to private access to the walled gardens. So, really, no one should pretend that changing distribution models would be a wash — or a pin prick.
Edited 2009-11-24 19:00 UTC
I don’t think they have seriously proposed a paywall yet, the bing plan just puts it off the google search engine. So bloggers would still be able to direct link to their hearts content, and those who use RSS feeds or something similar wouldn’t be effected at all.
If they do try a complete paywall, then they would need to make sure that everyone institutes a paywall, since if even one sizable news organization didn’t, it all falls apart and the guy who didn’t shut his website off gets all the traffic. Even if everyone does set up a paywall, they still have absolutely no defense against someone reading the article and posting a summary and analysis elsewhere. Not to mention the rampant use of copy/paste. Its the inherent difficulty in try to control the distribution of text, the most easily copyable medium available, through the internet, the most advanced content distribution network ever. And if the content isn’t time sensitive, well I think the vast majority of people will wait a couple of hours until it shows up on the blogs or twitter or wherever. If a story isn’t time sensitive, it doesn’t have much direct value since it will be everywhere for free in a matter of time, whether its behind a paywall or not.
It’s starting to happen…
News Corp. Joined by Rivals Weighing Google Block
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aRVlZEzbmNu0
So no more News Corp stuff on Google?
Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
For news paid for by corrupt governments and businesses click [bing]. For the rest of the internet click [google].
Well that is true consumer benefit knowing all green-communist crap can be found in one place, helps people to find truth on stuff when you can cross reference those non-scientific facts of from true results. Not to mention who is biggest advertizing firm in internet, I give you hint it starts G like greencommunistbullshit.
Murdock has no clue. A simple robots.txt will delist his crap websites from Google. He could have done that ages ago. Legal action .. pfft.
And Murdock is an old fart with even less clues about how people search for information. They don’t search for his stupid sites, they search for information and Google is still be best place to get information. Delisting all big commercial news publishers won’t hurt Google one bit.
It will help more credible publically funded/user generated news sites.
It really is a win-win.
I don’t know, I *wish* it were the case that Murdoch didn’t know what was going on. But I worry about this – he’s not stupid as a businessman or a lobbyist AFAIK. Specifically, various people are suggesting he’s busy making a case to mislead / give an excuse to politicians to “regulate the internet” in some moronic way.
I’m less worried that he’ll be directly “successful” in creating paywalls and more worried that he’s just building a facade of “Help, the evil internet is killing the news!” so that politicians will introduce various kinds of damaging legislation to help prop up him and people like him. With my super-cynical hat on, given a Murdoch endorsement can tip an election, it’s not really in the interests of any governing party to cross him.
The most probable outcome from all of this is that premimum news content provided by NewsCorp will be licensed by both Microsoft *and* Google from now on; furthermore, there will be advertising revenue-sharing. Google will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to do it, but it will eventually have no choice, because it doesn’t want to give Microsoft the title “king of Internet news search”.
News Corp. knows how to use robot.txt.
They want Google to index their websites, but they want them to pay for the privilege of showing the results.
What I don’t get is HOW they could stop google even if they wanted to? At least not without demanding that their users log in. I mean robots.txt is just a display of “will”.
And isn’t the internet a public place? How can indexing and showing snippets of a text being in violation of… anything? Is this the beginning of the end of net neutrality?
Bingo! You nailed it.
What are you smoking? Of course it will hurt Google. It means Google has lower-quality indexed news content, relative to its competitors. It means that many people will start using more than one search engine — one for news and the other for anything else — which will inevitably hurt Google.
Nope, the internet is full with copies of the same “news”. When all the commerical vendors go to Google, nobody will care because the information is still out there and indexed by Google.
There are a lot of public news organisations that aren’t allowed to delist google, then there are sites like Huffington Post that will never delist Google.
And paying for indexing in general will not happen, even MS isn’t that stupid. Then the genie would be out of the bottle.
The basis of search is that you can index for free. Their whole business model would be dead if they start to pay for indexing.
Indexing premium content from behind the paywall maybe.
You actually think that it will escape the notice of all of the “commercial news vendors” that they can make money by allowing someone other than Google to index their content? I wouldn’t bet on it. But that’s essentially the dilemma that Google’s going to have to wrestle with. One thing is certain: Newspapers are going out of business because they can’t monetize giving away news for free (duh). They will either evolve and copy NewsCorp, or they’ll make a deal with Google. Either way, things are going to change.
Steam engine manufacturers are out of business too, so what?
Nothing is going to change. As I said, there are lots and lots of news providers that will never remove public access from their news (which most of time is reprinting content from AP etc. anyways)
People will just don’t give a damn where their news comes from. The BBC for example is fine for nearly everybody.
And besides no search engine will pay for stuff they now get for free and that could destroy their business model. Not even MS.
Try to read and understand my comments ..
Over and out.
You guys just don’t get it. AP, NewsCorp, and other sources of premium news content are the primary providers of this content. When they go out of business, anybody that feeds on them will also lose the ability to “repost their content.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/30/associated-press-google-business-m…
People do care where their news comes from. Successful branding (eg. FoxNews) proves it. People from the US aren’t going to go to the BBC to get news about the US. Get real.
Just because things are going to change does not mean they are going to follow Murdoch’s plan! His will fail because MS will not make enough on searches to maintain payments to 100’s of news sources! So MS will pick their top 10 and Google will pick it’s top 10 and then everyone else will go out of business! and we will be stuck with multinational BS for news coverage. Looks like a no-win-for-us scenario to me!
KRR
That depends entirely on what you might mean by “quality”.
Many people would turn the definition around on you … in their minds “quality” content might well be defined as “the easiest readable story able to be found on Google”.
This also depends. It may well actually mean that some sites which have severely overestimated their own importance in the public’s mind could effectively disappear from public view, never to be heard from again.
kragill:
Precisely. Many people will just read whichever version of the story which is the first hit on Google.
Edited 2009-11-24 01:44 UTC
if google de-indexes them,
it will mean less trafic for them
from google. microsoft hoping people
will use their search engine to find
the sites they used to find with google.
People might find other sites then,
less for the de-indexed sites and
microsoft if that happend.
I have tried microsofts bing sometimes
but I could not find what I was looking for.
I suppose they better improve their
search engine in stead of making this
kind of deals.
but i wonder, is this legal?
Yeah, it is. Provided that NewsCorp doesn’t hold a monopoly on news content — and if Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on search engines. Which neither has.
I agree with what you said, but your formatting makes me want to read your comment like a poem.
Murdoch doesn’t block Google because what he wants is the search engines to pay him to index News corp’s crap.
The sites who would leave Google’s index would lose ad revenue, so whatever MS was willing to pay would have to be substantially greater than what would be lost.
If this does go forward with enough people leaving Google’s index, it just means the eventual end to respecting the robots.txt file, followed by law suits (over fair use, etc).
I believe that MS and News Corp both have met their match in Google. Google wins this one easily.
Last year was it that Murdoch made the Wall Street Jouranl a pay site again? You can read the first paragraph for free, but need an account to read the rest. Unless you followed an link from Google, then you get the whole story for free. I decided to test this for myself to see if it was true, and is seems to be.
From Google News I got this story;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125898768560860537.html?mod=WSJ_hpp…
From http://online.wsj.com I got this;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125898768560860537.html?mod=WSJ_hpp…
Both links look the same, but from Google I got the whole story and only a paragraph from wsj.com. It’s their own site and they made this loop hole on purpose and they leave it there while Murdoche is spouting all this nonsense.
I used the same browser, so even if it was a cookie or something from Google, then I should have still got the second story for free, but wsj.com is allowing the story for free if you are referred by Goggle.
True – I on the links – I opened both, and from OSNews.com got just the first paragraph. Then took the title of the article, and went to google and search for it with the ‘site:wsj.com’ qualifier – and got a link to the full article[1] that nearly matches what was provided here.
Now, my guess is that WSJ.com gets a referral fee from Google – e.g. $0.05/click or something. So they are probably getting something from Google or they wouldn’t have done it. Just a guess though as to why there might be a difference. That is basically what happens with Googles Adwords and other related advertising click-throughs.
[1]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125898768560860537.html
It really comes down to this. I use Google. Do those news companies want me to read their sites? Then they will stay with Google. If the don’t want me to read their sites, then they will drop Google. Is the long term add revenue worth the one time bonus from MS?
How would making a deal with MS reflect on their creditably? Will other software or hardware manufactures be able to advertise on the site? Will stories about other OS’s be reported on or spun to benefit the sites new search provider? How much access and control is MS buying over the news with this? Will stories that put MS in a bad light not show up when searched for?
Fortunately their are plenty of competing news sties out their for us to choose from, so I think this is just posturing by Murdock to get some cash and MS thinks it is buying something exclusive and getting more publicity for Bung.
Can you get to complete WSJ stories from Bung like you do with Google? Nope, looks like they link most stories to MSNBC. If MSNBC decides to follow Murdoche, then I think we need to panic since the FCC may decide to step in.
Like a lot of businesses run by old school CEO’s, Murdock does not get the internet so he is trying frantically to mold the internet (through legilation, mergers, partnerships…) so that he can remain relevant in the same fashion he has in the past. The problem is he has a lot of power to f*^# things up trying. I just hope (and I’m not confident) he dies before he can f*&^ it up too bad. He needs to retire (ya right!) and let someone else who is more familiar with 21st century technology and techniques take over.
What scares me about MS is that when anything that dominant dies or starts to fail, they tend to go kicking and screaming and there is the possibility of leaving a huge “death” footprint in the process.
KRR
No, if that were actually true, Murdoch wouldn’t even bother with the Internet. He clearly understands the competitive threats to this business, knows where the ad revenue is going (Google), and is responding in kind. How is that “old school”?
That’s just pathetic.
Like who? Al Gore?
Many people don’t seem to be able to grasp/acknowledge that NewsCorp and other news-gathering organizations offer a TON of value in their content. Don’t think so? Do you read news? Do you watch television? WTF do you think collects the news? Gnomes? Magic fairies? It’s reporters on the ground. Somebody has to pay them, or you don’t get news.
The traditional print revenue model is dying because it no longer makes sense to distribute physical newspapers anymore. Google and other dotcoms suckered people with their mantra that “content should be free”, but that doesn’t leave any room for NewsCorp to make any money.
What we have here is a situation where Google is riding on NewsCorp’s back — making tons of advertising revenue that previously went to newspapers — and Google is stingy. They want to index NewsCorp’s content, suck all possible advertising revenue, but not pay NewsCorp for what it’s worth.
Does that really strike you as fair? Why should Google get a free pass on this? Why is NewsCorp the bad guy? They pay reporters to gather news. Do you really think they should operate as a charity for Google? No freaking way. That’s lunacy, and the sooner that people understand what’s happening, the better.
Edited 2009-11-24 00:59 UTC
Wrong! The revenue for his publications has been dwindling for many years and he is only now reacting after the fact! If he was smart he would have started this 10+ years ago! He is up to his chin in water and this seems like his only out! He just does not have the imagination to make this work.
AG?? WTF are off in the weeds, smoking it perhaps?
In the US these are called advertisers!
Not as much perhaps as before but they can make plenty with the current model
Without Google Newcorp would be less well off then they are. You forget that Google sends readers their way and the more people Google sends there the more they can charge the advertisers. Newcorp will make less money, but in my view that is good! With these large multinationals you pay a very high premium to maintain the vertical structure of any company that big, Maybe they need to adapt… Na Just f*&^ everybody else and keep things the way they are until!
The world has changed and Newcorp is dying!
After thinking about this a bit I think I understand the eventual goal of Murdock here, well enough to post a guess in comment on a news story anyway. Its clear that the news business wants both subscription size money and advertisers size money. They want to be paid directly every time someone reads their story and sell ads. This has been their business model for ages and they don’t want to change. This could be done with a paywall, but paywalls rarely work very well, to my knowledge only the WSJ has managed to make it work, and its niche, business reporting, is very time sensitive and news hungry. So they know paywalls won’t work since people will just go to whoever doesn’t have a paywall.
So how can they get the advantages of a freely available web page and a paywall. By playing Microsoft and Google against each other. Once they secure a deal with Microsoft, they believe that Google (and any other search engine who wants to compete) will be forced to follow into a similar one. Therefore their desired result brings them right back to square one, except that now both Google and Microsoft are paying them a nice chunk of cash. Neither can drop the contract for fear of giving the other an advantage and are pretty much stuck in a red queen’s race, having to pay the News organizations money solely because their competitor is paying the news organizations money. At least thats how Murdock envisions it (maybe).
I’m not sure what this story has to do with Microsoft, Google, or OSes. It is, however, reasonably brief, so I will quote it in full:
Edited 2009-11-23 19:44 UTC
Same here. And when I saw it this morning, I either backed out or closed the tab (don’t remember which). I couldn’t be bothered to register for “free.” And creeps like Murdoch think I’ll pay? Yep, when pigs fly.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a243c8b2-d79b-11de-b578-00144feabdc0.html
– courtesy of google
(turns out it’s the same url with the “?nclick_check=1” removed though)
they want to pay businesses to leave the most popular search engine on the planet, and move to one that no one uses. Sounds about right.
When MS starts paying me to search with Bing I’ll start using it till then I use the one that works the best for me and right now it is not Bing.
Here is what bugs me about Microsoft. They were ruled to be unfairly using their monopoly of the OS market to their advantage. Yet, we dont ever say anything about them using their profits obtained from said monopoly to buy their way into other markets. How many companies have the cash to buy their way into the gaming market, or the search market. Seems like they should not be allowed to use the profits from their illegal actions in the past to buy market share.
When reading news on the internet it is pretty obvious that they are all stealing news, since the stories are mostly identical except for typing errros – which means that they are all (except one) selling old news.
In fact they have always sold old news, but earlier people would pay for old news, because they would otherwise have to wait for the next day to get the old news for free from someone who paid for a newspaper.
Murdoch’s problem is, that because of the Internet, people can now steal their own old news and they won’t pay Murdoch to play with Morse code and paper.
He has the same problem as the music/movie industry: How can we make people pay for something worth nothing?
I think the answer will be: COPYRIGHTED NEWS.
Only a complete idiot would remove their website from the most popular search engine on the Internet.
Unfortunately, we seem to have a lot of idiots.
I spend only a small fraction of my blog reading time on traditional news websites. I’m a gadget and tech lover, so I’m always on sites like this, Engadget, /. and so on. So to me, the *value* of a traditional news site is actually not terribly significant, and I suspect I’m not the only one who thinks this way.
However, clearly society needs some level of reporting. We need to know about events of significance (both globally and nationally) so we can react to them.
So what do you do when you have an important service that no one really wants to pay for? Sounds to me like news should become a tax-payer funded activity, and not a privately run business. i.e, the government employs journalists who publish articles online.
Problem solved.
Except the whole ‘free press’ to keep government in check… yeah, I guess the problem is solved.
In any case, it’s not like the press we have is independent and agressive enough to question government on matters of actual importance.
Government control of all media outlets? I think not. News has value, people read it and use it. Its up to the content producers to figure out how to monetize it. And they aren’t in competition with google for this monetization either, sometimes I wonder if these media people actually understand how google makes their money. Google has search ads, its like putting up billboards on the side of the road, while websites are the destination and can only put up ads at that one place. To continue the metaphor, a lot more people use the road than are going to any single destination, thus more money. While roads might not have much use without a destination, roads make it much easier to get there and therefore have value. Google doesn’t steal anything you still have to click the link to get anything more than a justifiable under fair use teaser at most. The ads that google sells aren’t ads that would be going to news sites if they didn’t exist. If the ad rates that news sites are getting aren’t enough to support them, they need to figure out something new, blaming google misses the entire point. I’d love to see them actually try to bring google to court for their ‘stealing’. They wouldn’t dare because they know they would lose by any standard of law.
Honestly its probably true that news sites won’t ever be making the kind of money they did when they commanded media empires, ‘real money’ as Murdock calls it. But on the other hand the barrier to entry has never been lower in history, and its only going to get lower. Pre-internet you needed millions to start a new newspaper or a hundreds of millions to start to start a new tv network. Because of the high barrier to entry the established players commanded a lot of power. Now that barrier has been torn down, the cost of distribution is down to almost nothing, and content creation is cheaper than its ever been. The old media empires will never be as powerful as they once were, that market has been changed forever, but we are going to see much more completion and innovation in this space than ever before, news has a future beyond being propped up by government bailouts, but it won’t be the same the one that came before it, and I think that is a good thing.
That’s a horrible solution. It means that government can propagandize the news, and put pressure on the news organization through funding/defunding to see things their way. And it *would* happen. Politicians are sleazy bastards.
I know personally I use either the ABC (Australian govt funded) or the BBC news, so Mr Murdoch can remove his content and it will make zero difference to me.
In my opinion he can charge for his content if he wishes that is his right if he owns the content. From what I have seen of his paper creations I wont be subscribing.
I think that if an organisation removes content from Google less people will find the content in question and will more than likely not even be aware of it being there. Thus these organisations will have to spend more to advertise their content in other media or different locations. If they think Bing will bring in the $$$ I sincerely doubt it as Bing just does not make the grade and the momentum is behind Google is hard to breach.
It sounds to me like do this or I will take my bat and ball home and no one will play!!!