Rupert Murdoch threatens to block Google searches
- Mon, 9 Nov 2009
- Comments (3)
Rupert Murdoch has said that his company, News Corp, could prevent Google and other search engines from indexing its news content in order to get surfers to pay for the content.
In an interview with Sky News Australia, Murdoch said that his company could put technical measures in place to stop content being indexed by news aggregation services such as Google News.
Murdoch named Google, Microsoft and Ask.com as companies who "steal our [News Corp's] stories".
Google has previously been critical of Murdoch's plans to charge for content.
Google argued that surfers would simply go to different sites to get their news fix rather than pay to access News Corp's newspaper sites, which include The Sun and The Times.
Murdoch, as well as the editor of the Wall Street Journal, another of News Corp's sites, have accused Google and other news aggregators such as NewsNow.co.uk of being "parasites" for indexing its news stories.
The Wall Street Journal already charges for access, though visitors to the site can see the first paragraph of the site before being prompted to sign up.
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Comments
Latest comments
November 09 14:06
Chris
Thanks for the story and embedded video - very interesting. And totally free too!
November 09 14:06
blackcurrant
Publications like the Wall street journal and FT actually provide analysis ( not just news) hence the willingness of people to subscribe to them. Subscribing to the news just doesn't feel right to me. There has to be added value. Also we get a comprehensive news service from the Beeb which continues to do an amazing job. That aside, does that mean if I sell a salacious story to the sun, I'll have to pay to read it in online?
November 09 15:46
Carl Barron
Cut your nose off to spite your face comes to mind.
Advertising revenue is News Corps biggest revenue stream by reducing access to your Sites will reduce revenues.