Murdoch-Microsoft Deal In the Works

Hugh Pickens writes "The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is in discussions to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, to 'de-index' its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search, and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet. Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content. 'This is all about Microsoft hurting Google's margins,' said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan. 'It's easy to believe that [Microsoft] may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google,' writes Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. 'Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either; he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.'"

Comments

I don't get it

[mcgrew]

Now if the big news sites suddenly drop from Google but can be found via Bing, people are going to change there

I don't understand how news sites are going to drop from Google. I guess I need to RTFA? It's a public internet; unless Murdoch's sites are encrypted there's no way, legal or technological, to keep Google from indexing them unless Googles wants to stop indexing them.

Plus, I don't know how many news outlets Murdoch ("Morlock?) owns, but guess what? Nobody needs Murdoch or his newspapers. Personally, I dislike the man's ideas and politics and the slant he puts in the news. I, for one, would welcome Murdoch sites not being listed on Google -- if it could happen, which I don't believe it can.

Is the Financial Times a Murdoch paper?

Re:In a similar move...

[mcgrew]

SUV manufacturers asked the road workers to build a 30 cm high bump along the center of all the lanes

You jest, but my sedan scrapes when I leave McDonalds (and my mother's driveway, I park on the street when I visit her). On some drive-throughs the window is about where my roof is. And it's not a small sedan, either. Glad I'm not driving a Spitfire or something.

Re:If anyone can see it, it can be indexed.

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Now let's just hope Larry and Sergey

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Can survive the armada of chairs thrown at them ...

On a more serious note, though, about Fox News. Closing your eyes to one perspective, can only diminish you. Even if the only thing you lose is a window into other's ways of thinking, that's a valuable thing you lost. And frankly, you'd lose more. One recent idiocy that needs seriously needs counterbalancing comes to mind : I for one find "pre-traumatic stress" a thoroughly unsatisfactory explanation of murdering innocents after shouting "allah akbar". In fact it seems to me that the major himself linked this to his religion. Details like this are never hidden away when we're talking about the Balkans or Northern Ireland, a difference in reporting that embodies the very definition of racism. So, frankly I find the "pre-traumatic" idiocy racist to the bone : the MSNBC does not explain IRA attacks against the UK by any such psychobabble.

Everyone knows why, and I for one despise the rotting carcas of racism that is attempting to fall out the closet's door. If someone would explain to me why people of "that certain religion", which is proven more and more a death cult with each passing day, get preferential treatment.

Re:Now let's just hope Larry and Sergey

[sabs]

You're calling Islam a death cult and you're whining THEY get preferential treatment?
I think you need some history books.
Or maybe we should call Catholicism a Death Religion, because the IRA's been bombing the crap out of the Protestants for a hundred years.
Christianity as a whole, a bunch of whack jobs murdering doctors because abortion is murder, and murder is wrong.
Crusades, Inquisition, do those ring a bell.
Puritans.

Pot, the Kettle says to stop calling you're a hypocrite and an idiot.

That being said, "Pre-Traumatic Stress" is kinda weird. But then, human beings stress out about "what might happen" all the time. If part of what might happen is: "I'm going to die" certainly some folks would freak out. Afterall, most young men who draft dodged during Vietnam, did not do it because of any strong moral misgivings about the War in Vietnam, they did it because they did not want to die. So, I don't know. Pre-Traumatic Stress might be something realistic.

Re:Now let's just hope Larry and Sergey

[Pojut]

And during Bush Jr.'s presidency, they were the only ones who WERE towing Bush's party line.

The only difference is which direction the pendulum is swinging...regardless, if you stand there watching it, you are gonna get smacked in the face by it.

We need people like him running the world

[lacaprup]

He's probably several orders of magnitutde smarter than that idiot in the Whitehouse. Who gives a rat's @ss what his given slant is? He makes progress. Obama is another shill for banks and unions. Whopee, haven't seen him already.