Microsoft to pay Murdoch for ditching Google

Posted on 26 Nov 2009 at 12:08

Microsoft has met with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp with the aim of striking a deal to have the newspaper company's stories removed from Google.

According to the Financial Times Microsoft is keen to offer the company cash in order to remove its content from Google and leave it on Bing. The Financial Times goes on to state that Microsoft has approached other publishers with a view to a similar deal.

The move makes a lot of sense for Microsoft, as it's keen to damage Google and promote its own Bing search engine. For Rupert Murdoch, the deal comes at the right time, as he's recently spoken out against the internet, saying that revenues are too low from websites. With other publishers keen to make more money from their content, eager to get back to the glory days of newspaper publishing, Microsoft's cash could be hard to refuse.

Google has been keen to play down the importance of having newspaper content listed, saying that it doesn't need news content. In reality, this accounts for a small fraction of internet searches.

Perhaps the bigger question is, if you were to search Google and the results didn't include one of News Corp's papers, would that make you switch to Bing? For most people, we don't think it will; they'll just click on the most relevant results until they find one they're happy with. The result could well be an expensive bill for Microsoft and a short-term reprieve for newspaper companies.

Author: David Ludlow

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