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Ear to the Ground

Murdoch, Microsoft May Team Up to Challenge Google

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Posted on Nov 23, 2009
Murdoch
Flickr / indio

Over the last decade, Google has ballooned into the many-headed online hydra we know it to be today, and despite grumblings about monopolies and a couple of legal tussles, the company’s viselike grip has seemed assured for years to come. However, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch might be gearing up to challenge Google’s market dominance.

Murdoch is making noises about blocking News Corp. content from showing up in Google searches; instead, stories culled from The Wall Street Journal and other publications under his corporation’s umbrella would appear exclusively under Microsoft’s Bing search engine results.

So what’s Murdoch thinking? The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson offers some suggestions here—KA

Bloomberg:

News Corp. is considering blocking Google Inc.’s Internet search engine from displaying its news articles and is talking to Microsoft Corp. about listing only on its site, according to people familiar with the matter.

The talks with Microsoft are still at an early stage and may not result in an agreement, said the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions are private. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is also talking to other publishers, one of the people said.

Microsoft is seeking exclusive content to draw users to its Bing search engine in an industry dominated by Google, which has about six times as many U.S. users. News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch said this month he may block Google from scanning and indexing stories from his newspapers, which include the Wall Street Journal and Times of London.

The Wall Street Journal charges users for access to its Web site. Murdoch has said he plans to start online subscriptions for all of News Corp.’s newspapers.

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By coloradokarl, November 24, 2009 at 11:14 am Link to this comment

Microsoft will slowly wither into the dust bin of old ideas…........

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Leefeller's avatar

By Leefeller, November 24, 2009 at 8:46 am Link to this comment

Since I have little use for Muddock and his alleged news, coupling with Microsoft provides an opportunity for me not to support two Monopolies for the price of one?

This could turn out to be like the gas wars of yor, only with many fewer competitors.  So something like price wars between Costco and Wall-mart?

In the end we know what ever happens, will be for the good of the people.

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By fritz, November 23, 2009 at 5:31 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

id love it if all murdoch content was barred from google - save me sifting through his bile - you it rupert! i dare ya! you wont, youre scared

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By John, November 23, 2009 at 4:22 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Rupert is just making noise.  If he truly wants an end to indexing of his content, all he needs to do is put a plain text file in his web site document root, named
robots.txt,  and add a one line statement which tells google’s web crawler not to read the site.  Google’s indexers honor robots.txt directives, as all honorable
decent web spiderers do.

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By diamond, November 23, 2009 at 3:53 pm Link to this comment

Completely futile. I heard a commentator in the know saying that nothing they do can stop the inexorable march of news addicts to the internet. Murdoch is a horrible old fascist, still firmly mired in the 19th century and his deal with Microsoft may yet attract the attention of anti-trust lawyers. Microsoft wants to grab Google’s market share but they’ve got no hope of doing that and as the commentator also pointed out, the media has had 15 years to decide what the future would be with the internet in the picture and they buried their heads in the sand and did nothing. No one trusts the mainstream media any more because of their endless lies and spin so it’s a self-inflicted wound. Murdoch is a fool if he thinks anyone cares what he does and a bigger fool if he thinks they’re going to pay him to lie to them.

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By skulz fontaine, November 23, 2009 at 3:43 pm Link to this comment

That’s just like Murdoch to chain his Burns-esque ass to an albatross like
microsoft. Hmmm, would that be Rhyme of the Ancient Fascist?

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By Mary Ann McNeely, November 23, 2009 at 2:19 pm Link to this comment

So?  Does anyone reading this site care about the megalomaniac Murdoch and his lethal lies?  If you want to swagger into Stalingrad naked and unarmed watch Fox News.

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