Microsoft, News Corp Make Bid To Be Irrelevant

8:59 pm EST November 22nd, 2009 | Media | 6 Comments

So dumb, it hurts.

Microsoft is in discussions with News Corp. to remove its news articles from Google in a move to marginalize the search engine that could have ramifications for the newspaper biz, according to the Financial Times.

The talks, which are at an early stage, center around payment for News Corp.’s newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal. News Corp. topper Rupert Murdoch has previously said he wants payment for content from his newspapers, which include the New York Post.

Quite frankly, Google could probably promote the lack of News Corp.’s “journalism” in its engine as a feature, not a bug. I’m not one of those people who believes that Google can never be beat, but this kind of side deal makes me think Bing is compromised and increases the trustworthiness of Google in my eyes.

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6 Responses to “Microsoft, News Corp Make Bid To Be Irrelevant”

  1. cj says:
    November 22, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    I think I understand now why Frank is favoring Bing over Google.

  2. jojo says:
    November 22, 2009 at 10:45 pm

    I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Mark Cuban’s take on the situation.

    http://blogmaverick.com/2009/11/22/bing-trying-to-get-exclusive-on-fox-smart/

  3. jr says:
    November 22, 2009 at 10:56 pm

    wankers travel in packs

  4. Oliver Willis says:
    November 22, 2009 at 11:12 pm

    Cuban really doesn’t understand this. He got lucky – amazingly so – with Broadcast.com being sold to Yahoo at the top of the market, but otherwise doesn’t know dick. People search not for brand names, but for an answer to their questions. Sure, it helps to have a source of authority as the answer, but Google – or any good search algorithm – will find the best available source. This stuff is walled-garden stuff that didn’t work 15 years ago when there were services like AOL and MSN, it sure as hell won’t work now.

  5. Craig says:
    November 23, 2009 at 8:56 am

    This is a dangerous game Microsoft are playing in my opinion. A scenario where companies see themselves aiding search engines rather than search engines aiding them could go very wrong for both Microsoft and Google.

  6. Does Microsoft hoping to buy away Google News users « Pop Attention Span says:
    November 23, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    [...] Oliver Willis is right when he says a lot of people will like Google better if it were free of News Corp content. I know I would be happier if I could have gone through the past two seasons of Doctor Who without seeing The Sun report again and again that Tennant and/or Davis was about to quit the show until they finally did. (Keep saying it’s about to happen, eventually you’ll be right.) [...]