News Corp. Sites May Disappear from Google
This story was written by CNET's Greg Sandoval
Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon who has long accused Google of ripping off content from his newspapers, says his sites may soon disappear from the search engine's listings.
Murdoch is chairman of News Corp., the newspaper, TV, and Internet empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, and Hulu. He made the comments in an interview late last week with Sky News Australia. (See video below).
After Murdoch accused Google, Microsoft, and others of "stealing" his company's content, he was asked why he just doesn't pull his Web sites from Google's search results.
"I think we will," Murdoch responded. "But that's when we start charging."
Murdoch and other News Corp. execs have said that they intend to charge readers and viewers. In the past, the company's sites have relied on advertising revenue.
Murdoch made it clear he's no fan of the ad-supported model. "There are no news sites or blog sites making any serious money," he said.
"What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google," Murdoch continued. "The fact is there isn't enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites but paying."
When asked why he would buck the trend of offering free content, Murdoch said: "(The public) shouldn't have had it free. I think we've been asleep."
Google has said that it feels obligated to help media companies because it needs their content. That hasn't stopped Murdoch and his staff from continuing to make hostile comments about the search engine. What News Corp. hasn't done much of is follow up with action.
Is News Corp. trying to scare Google into making more concessions? Or is it just afraid to pull the trigger?
By Greg Sandoval
CNET Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon who has long accused Google of ripping off content from his newspapers, says his sites may soon disappear from the search engine's listings.
Murdoch is chairman of News Corp., the newspaper, TV, and Internet empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox, Fox News, and Hulu. He made the comments in an interview late last week with Sky News Australia. (See video below).
After Murdoch accused Google, Microsoft, and others of "stealing" his company's content, he was asked why he just doesn't pull his Web sites from Google's search results.
"I think we will," Murdoch responded. "But that's when we start charging."
Murdoch and other News Corp. execs have said that they intend to charge readers and viewers. In the past, the company's sites have relied on advertising revenue.
Murdoch made it clear he's no fan of the ad-supported model. "There are no news sites or blog sites making any serious money," he said.
"What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google," Murdoch continued. "The fact is there isn't enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites but paying."
When asked why he would buck the trend of offering free content, Murdoch said: "(The public) shouldn't have had it free. I think we've been asleep."
Google has said that it feels obligated to help media companies because it needs their content. That hasn't stopped Murdoch and his staff from continuing to make hostile comments about the search engine. What News Corp. hasn't done much of is follow up with action.
Is News Corp. trying to scare Google into making more concessions? Or is it just afraid to pull the trigger?
By Greg Sandoval
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Murdoch likes impossible ambitions, but he has the money to indulge them. Murdoch's latest quest, however quixotic, is to make the internet pay Murdoch as handsomely as has his newspaper empire.
So, Murdoch (re)floats the proposition the internet should be a system of gates and tollbooths for his publications. And if only we web travelers cooperate and deposit our money in his tollbooth, he will become richer, still.
Clearly, Murdoch hopes his brash determination will carry the day, and somehow he can ignore the fact the free internet is here to stay.
THE FREE INTERNET
How convenient for Murdoch, but he is late (again) for the party. Murdoch already knows the free internet is an evolved and dominant model, and likely to become even more pervasive.
Surprisingly, the free internet was not the first business model attempted-- it simply evolved to replace a cluster of websites offering play (content) for pay. And it did so more rapidly than many expected, demonstrating growth and staying power.
Especially for Google, which ran with the fundamental understanding the internet is about combining advertisers and products with website visitors (ie. traffic)-- not about charging admission. Once website management builds a product with appeal, visitors will arrive, and draw advertisers with them.
CONTENT WITH APPEAL
But what is attractive content? A major benefit of a free internet is a constantly improving quality of experience-- the competitive evolution of better products, ideas and ways of presenting them, as determined by audience-drawing power.
Website visitors make the determination about quality and value, not the website management. In a rough democracy of website metrics, the product direction arrives from below, not dictated from above.
By its openly competitive model, the free web successfully demonstrates a properly regulated and open market can thrive and deliver increasing value. This applies to the marketplace of ideas, as well.
IDEAS AS PRODUCTS
In that equally competitive market, content based on professionally-edited hard news, fact and reality is likely to survive and prosper. By the same notion, a news operation shunning spin and editorialization is more likely to succeed-- it is far easier to offend, than to draw an audience.
Advertisers sense this, as well. When Glenn Beck made his most infamous remark, at least 15 advertisers responded to public pressure and/or made the decision that Beck quality had fallen short. Beck can say what he likes (and usually does) but his audience-- and advertisers estimate of that audience-- hold him to a standard of fact and modicum of truth.
THE WORLD OF FAUX NEWS
But truth continues a concept challenging to Faux News, and is not its primary product offering. Faux is the creature of Murdoch money, directed by partisan management into an ideology outlet, operating under the shell of a news gathering organization.
Accordingly, few professional news networks consistently visit Faux for anything more than reporting GOP party line and opinion, or hearing Faux talking heads try to define it. Because its line of opinion is so prominent and uniform, Faux serves as a far better indicator of GOP opinion than Daily KOS or Salon is for Democrats.
But like Reader's Digest, itself a failed conservative publication which struggled for a more general audience, Faux runs the risk of preaching to a diminishing choir of Archie Bunkers and a vanishing demographic.
To survive, Faux must find an alternative to railing against necessary and perhaps inevitable change, just as must the GOP and its faithful.
If there is survival, it lies in the ability to reach new audience share. Most of Faux energy from Roger Ailes is directed at mutating The Message just enough to draw new faces into the tent-- including black and brown faces. And greeting them with new names and spokesmen for old ideologies and mythologies, because the old corporate and monied patronage remains strong,
Whether Faux can remain faux in a competitive marketplace of ideas is the real question. Odds are, the Faux "Disneyland" of ideas will remain entirely as artificial, no matter what Murdoch wishes to make it.
Too bad.
Just disappear!
by Skirt-Lifter November 9, 2009 5:11 PM EST
I am watching Ann Coulter on FOX News right now. Is she a he? She has an adam's apple and I swear she looks like a young Alice Cooper.
I say 10-1 that Ann Coulter is hotter than you and would not give you the time of day.
==================================================================
YOUZA-BOUZA!!! You need to get out more. Ann Coulter and the word
"hot" do not belong in the same sentence. You must be one strange
character. Maybe it's time you and your Sarah Palin Blowup doll
"patched" (pun intended) things up .....
Good riddance.
Let all the neocon dimwits spend their money on Rupert instead of fake tea parties.