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Rupert Murdoch Hates Google, Loves the iPad
Hugh Pickens writes "The Register reports that News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, reiterated his disgust at how search engines handle news and called on old media to rethink how their stories are distributed on the web. 'It's produced a river of gold, but those words are being taken mostly from the newspapers,' said Rupert. 'I think they ought to stop it, that the newspapers ought to stand up and let them do their own reporting.' Murdoch added that the iPad was a 'wonderful tool' for listening to music, watching videos and reading newspapers. 'It may well be the saving of the newspaper industry,' by making it cheaper to distribute content to a broader audience, Murdoch said. 'I'm old, I like the tactile experience of the newspaper,' Murdoch said. '(But) if you have less newspapers and more of these, that's OK. It doesn't destroy the traditional newspaper, it just comes in a different form.'"
This is sort of like an Endorsement from Satan right?
If Rupert Murdoch praises something, it just can't be good.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'm an Apple fan, I think the iPad is an incredible media consumption device....
But then Murdoch had to open his stupid mount.
This is why we can't have nice things.
robots.txt
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It's no surprise the media loves a locked down device. If enough people have these kind of crippled devices, they can stop making content available online and require apps or subscriptions for everything. This also helps to explain the media's unabashed love for the iPad.
Wall Street Journal:
Online + Printed: $2.99/week
iPad only: $3.99/week
Anyone else see the problem here?
reiterated his disgust at how search engines handle news and called on old media to rethink how their stories are distributed on the web.
Then do us all a favor and pull your tabloid rags off Google. What's stopping you? I'm sure the core of your readers will stay with you, it's the only source that tells them what they want to hear.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Most publishers are desperate for readers. In fact, many sites *pay* for advertising to get people to their sites.
Rupert gets this for free from Google and other search engines, but fails to seize the opportunity to make money off it, or even to make a compelling enough site to keep subscribers around, and somehow this is Google's fault?
It seems like Google would be better off not linking to any of Murdoch's sites. It will be a small loss of income for them, and a rather large loss of income for him. Seeing as how he constantly bitches and moans about Google I think they're well within their rights (not just legal rights) to do this.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
Forget paying money to Murdoch and support Wikileaks!
Pot, Kettle much? At least I sign my name to my opinions.
Have you ever watched that movie called Big, with Tom Hanks? I remember very clearly this scene in which Susan is presenting her new revolutionary idea to her company. It is a cyber-comic book, in which you can display the pages of your favorite comic book and change the page and everything. Sounds familiar?
The executive, disgruntled, then asks: Why would a kid pay $100 for that device if he can get a comic book for just 15 cents?
Everyone laughs at Susan.
So aggregation of news, which is best for the consumer because they get the best writers everyone could hire (theoretically speaking), sucks for the big guys, so shut it down? I too like to have my cake and eat it too.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
When your mother named you dmgxmichael did your father object?
IOW: you're no less anonymous than any other coward on here.
I agree the analysis was simplistic, but maybe I can state it a little more clearly... old monolithic media organizations provide an invaluable service, in terms of investigative reporting and on site presence of people during important historical moments. However, the monolithic organization AC rather ineloquently derides above truly is outdated. In an era when communication is nearly free, a monolithic entity throwing tendrils all over the world doesn't make any sense.
In my estimation, it makes the most sense to have independent journalists (i.e. bloggers) reporting on local events and having those individual reports being compiled or organized by a central figure, like Google is doing now, or any newspaper could do if they get their head out of their ass. Eventually, in such a system, folks could establish credibility, networks and trust. They would be independent in every sense of the word. It's not a perfect model, but I do think it's a workable one.
Oh, and by the way, screws to the douches like Murdoch who think they can tell others what to think through their media empires.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
"you're no less anonymous than any other coward on here."
Rubbish, just because your slashdot identity is not your real world identity does not make it the same as posting AC. People don't stalk AC for revenge modding, astroturfing purposes, etc, nor can they look up AC's comment history and use it against them, nor can they tag AC as friend/foe.
I personally recognise quite a few far-right nutters by their slashdot id, I don't mark them as foes but I also don't bother responding to their crap. There are others who I recognise as having well reasoned opinions, similar ideals, or a specific field of expertise.
In other words a slashdot user has a searchable track record, an observable personality, and in many cases a reputation, an AC has none of those things.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I posit that if Rupert Murdoch is pissed, we (Internet generation) must be doing something right.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
If it's someone with a reliable track record, then yeah. In this case, it's Rupert Murdoch who has a track record of being reliable, in the sense that all he's endorsed in the past has been bad for me. I simply don't share his taste, and what's good for him makes the world worse off for me. ;-)
They could easily edit their robots.txt and keep Google out,
Murdoch may be evil, but can we at least understand what he wants? The 'problem' isn't with being indexed, it's about how it works with a paywall.
Google insist that, to be indexed, you show visitors clicking through the same page that their crawler sees. So they won't index stories that users will have to pay to see. (In fact, they make an exception if you can get the first few pages for free.) Sites using a paywall have often quietly allowed a 'back door', whereby visitors coming from google can see the page without paying, just so that it gets indexed. Murdoch would like to do away with that system, so that he can charge anyone who wants to see his news.
Even if he gets his way, it probably won't make much difference. Pagerank is based on links to your content, and there simply won't be so many links to content that needs a subscription. So his paywalled sites will sink down the results.
The mainstream media would hype for months to no end the "revolutionary" idea, and this before the company would spend a single penny on hyping of their own.
By the time the idea came into fruition most people of weak moral fortitude, lets call them fanboys, would feel compelled to buy it no matter what disregarding of hand a plethora of coolheaded and intellectually objective assesments against the idea.
They would actually *queue* tu buy this non essential article (and least in the USSR they queue for necessary items) and would rise the item triumphally the item on the air, Lion King wise, like if having won something like an olympic medal or an Engineering degree (the thought ...).
These people would consider acting triumphally after spending hundreds of $HARD_CURRENCY in a luxury item a reason for celbration. I humbly suggest that is a celebration of personal validation: I spend, therefore I am.
Sorry, I think I sligthly over the board in my reply.
iPad's customer is big media. It is not us. Oh sure, many of us love the idea of the iPad but honestly look who is benefiting most from it. e-Book sellers now get to raise prices, even Amazon caved on this and many originally thought Amazon to be a bunch of money grubbing jerks for charging so much for an e-Book. Hell, Apple handed their end users right into the hands of the new consumer, big media, and the end users are rejoicing at being bent over a barrel.
So of course Murdoch loves it, a whole slew of new ways for us to transfer money to them and their friends. And we will be happy for it because we will look so cool at Starbucks and the student centers.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Just sit tight. There are going to be at least a dozen or more Android-based tablets hitting the market by the end of 2010 that should fill in all the features missing from the iPad. Steve Jobs wants Apple to sell you the walled garden approach and Android-tablet vendors just want to sell you their awesome tablet and let you use whatever open software you want on it. I know which device(s) I'm going to support with my wallet.
Murdoch has got it ass-about. The reason that print media is dying is that the classified advertising model that was so profitable for so long has died. Craigslist has done far, far more damage to Murdoch's business than Google ever has, and there's nothing he can do about it. The cover price on newspapers doesn't even get close to covering the printing cost, let alone profit.
Another thing, maybe he can see coming. Online media provides a way of measuring advertising efficiency, something that is not possible in print. Count the clicks. As corporate advertising etc is going online so bean counters can know it's effectiveness. Same goes for job ads.
Print is dying because its advertising is obsolescent, not because of Google. Murdoch must know that
Interstitial spaces are filled with cream.
the featureset makes it seem like it'd be a good spot between e-reader and netbook
isn't that like saying apple's discovered a new meal between breakfast and brunch? i guess some people may enjoy it, while others find it unnecessary.
Well put.
However, my opinion is still pretty much the same, and as the geek I am, I of course knew most of your arguments from before.
The point is however, internet and PCs bring _unprecedented_ freedom in the world, in a world historically full of tyranny and serfdom. The "nice" iPad product of today, might very well become the DRM and privacy intrusive, locked-down, out-of-alternatives variant of tomorrow when everyone copies Apple's businessplan and governments starts to stamp down its heavy boots to support dying dinosaur-corporations. "Why should 'normal' people have access to fully programmable PCs?", they will say. "We have invented pretty much everything needed to be invented", is another one, the first step on the ladder down to our downfall in so case.
Even disregarding the future, iPhone, iPad, OS X and the likes prevent my flexibility and freedoms TODAY. That is why I regret buying Macbook Pro (no, the expensive hardware doesn't run Win XP superior to PCs today and OS X is shit for a geek. Darwin is far from Linux and apt-get goodies in so many ways I can't summarize it here even), iPhone (no tether, no MMS, no smileys), iPod (locked-down filesystem, otherwise pretty much OK) and I certainly wouldn't consider buying an iPad too, or any Apple product anymore, for that matter. Even my so-called "super" n-version airport is noticably much slower than other wireless networks and have piss-poor range, besides configuration is by a shitty proprietary application, as it also is with iPhone and most proprietary crap from Apple.
Unless you pay for updates, they are always incremental and not enhancing much. To really update, you have to buy the latest version gadget, disregarding that software updates could have given the same features = bad for environment. E.g. why is my 1st gen iPhone still lacking basic mobile features in 2010? Answer: It will never get properly updated. The same goes for OS X and every other product from Apple.
Apple is purposefully locked down their gadgets and having serious control-freak issues.
So buying and supporting Apple on a false sense of convenience, can have adverse effects from today on. Unless one is ignorant of these things, or just don't care.
IOW, Fuck Apple! If they don't change their attitude, I wish them a descent to be an example of how not to do business (screw your customers while hyping your product). Just because they're successful at it, doesn't make it right if it hampers people in the long run.
Problem is there is so much hype and myths surrounding Apple, and people are still falling for the propaganda (been there, done that). Common sense should prevail over longer time hopefully.
given that most "news" these days seems to be verbatim copies of press releases passed around by AP or similar agencies...
the investigative journalist are a myth these days, much the same as the rugged individual and other such concepts that US people wraps themselves in each day.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
You American right-wingers have absolutely no idea how skewed to the right your politics are. It's so bad, France's president, who comes from their political right wing, thinks it's absurd that there was such strong debate about healthcare reform. In Canada, our opinions are similar, and this surely applies in most if not all other democratic countries. The people in the US that watch Fox News and take it seriously are utterly brainwashed. It's so bad from our perspective that I have friends who aren't convinced that such people really exist in significant quanitities in the US, because it's so hard to believe. We find it hard to understand how so many people are all drinking Kool-Aid like this.
This isn't to say that I wholeheartedly endorse the Democratic Party (of course not), but their political leanings are much saner from an outside-the-US perspective.