Rupert Murdoch vs. Google
Are search engines stealing from Murdoch's newspapers?
News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch
(Reuters/Corbis/Jonathan Ernst)
The "battle between old media and the Web" is heating up, said Mark Trumbull in The Christian Science Monitor. Rupert Murdoch of News Corp. accused Google and other search engines of stealing his company's content by linking to it in search results without paying. Murdoch said the "content kleptomaniacs" would soon have to pay, and Associated Press CEO Tom Curley backed him up, saying content creators had waited too long to get tough.
Pay no attention to "Murdoch's macho outrage," said Weston Kosova in Newsweek. He could add simple code to his stories tomorrow, and, "poof," his content would be invisible to Google. But he won't, because Google isn't really stealing—it's providing a "free service" by posting short summaries and sending readers to newspapers and other content creators they desperately need.
So Google should call Murdoch's bluff, said Garett Rogers in ZDNet. If News Corp. and the AP won't "modify their robots.txt file to make Google ignore them," Google should do it for them and stop indexing their stories completely. "That would surely stop their complaining, right?"
Stamping out the aggregators isn't what really matters, said Julian Goldsmith in Britain's BNET. The bottom line is that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and every other media company has to figure out how to make money in an Internet age when "everyone expects content to be free." The companies that cover news can't "go on providing content for free much longer"—because they still have to pay their reporters.
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8 Comments
Posted by Howard, Monday, October 12, 2009, 12:43 pm Google should certainly call Murdoch's bluff. Google News brings together lots of great content from a myriad of different providers. Murdoch, Fox, News Corp is just one of those content providers, and their stuff is all crap. Google News would be a better service without it.
Posted by John_Gault, Monday, October 12, 2009, 3:02 pm I agree the Murdoch seems a little crazy, but he brings light a great point. How can the content providers keep going on for free? It might be in everyone's best interest to pay a little for the content viewed. Otherwise, all the reputable content providers will disappear. Then who will write the news stories? It seems like the content would just be decentralized so far that one source would provide our media, kind of the walmart of media content. Doesn't sound like a good future to me.
Posted by Mehitabel, Monday, October 12, 2009, 5:41 pm Maybe Murdock should take a page from the broadcast and cable industries and make his content available to the ISP's rather than search engines. I'm just throwing that out because I'm not sure how it would all work in cyberspace. But if they can set up a 'channel' and market it to an ISP lke CNN does to these cable companies, they might could make crazy money.
Posted by venicementor, Monday, October 12, 2009, 8:05 pm Poor Cha ching Rupert, afraid someone is going to cut in on his action.
Posted by Mark, Tuesday, October 13, 2009, 10:16 am I'm a little confused by this whole no money to make free news concept. TV has been free for years, and yet they still seem to have enough money to make the shows. Now, news providers only have to pay a few reporters and someone to maintain an internet server instead of paying for tons of paper and printing expenses, but they can't seem to make enough money to do it? It's called, make your site the critical goto site and let advertisers pay you. I thought TV shows did that, but it must be a completely new concept to some.
Posted by Les Evenchick, Tuesday, October 13, 2009, 1:10 pm Ley Murdock pay for reporters by geeting enough advertising to cover costs. If he can't do it, then let his businesses fold.Who needs him anyway?
Posted by HaHA, Wednesday, October 14, 2009, 12:37 am What is Rupert SCRUDGE afraid of... he doesn't have much time left in this earth anyway...
Posted by Paparazzo@frog.cc, Saturday, October 24, 2009, 8:19 pm Google should charge Murdoch for listing his websites.
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