Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch
Quick question: if links to Sun stories stopped appearing on Google, would anyone really care? Well, Rupert Murdoch appears to think so, as it’s rumoured that he’s been in talks with Microsoft to arrange a deal that would see his News Corp company get paid to remove their sites from the world’s #1 search engine.
Murdoch has been bleating a lot recently about how he expects to generate income from News Corp’s online content, and this deal would be a step towards furthering his schemes. If the rumour is true, Microsoft is considering signing an exclusivity deal with Murdoch’s media empire, which includes America’s Fox News network and papers such as the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Sun. The deal, if it were to take place, would give Microsoft’s Bing search engine sole rights to index all News Corp content.
Microsoft has also approached other online publishers with a view to setting up similar deals, according to a source quoted in the Financial Times.
Actually, this is brilliant.
I can’t stand Rupert Murdoch, his dictatorial working practices, and the pure and utter shite those papers of his print (mostly because of this, I’ve not read a newspaper in well over 10 years, and frankly, I’m proud of it).
I laughed at his joke of charging for news services, because it’s pretty unworkable.
However, I love this because I WOULD willingly pay someone to remove the shit that appears in the Sun (et al) from internet searches. That would be excellent!