Murdoch could block Google searches entirely – The Guardian — The interview with Sky is long but fairly interesting. Clearly Rupert is getting desperate. How’s MySpace working out for you, mate?
Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google’s search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.
In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.
In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of “kleptomania” and acting as a “parasite” for including in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google’s search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.
“I think we will, but that’s when we start charging,” he said. “We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story – but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form.”
that’d be fun to watch the site’s rank and position (not to mention any profitability) fall like a rock.
Let him do that and let him experience what good that will do him. He’ll become obsolete before he knows it. It is sad to see ‘dinosaurs’ like Murdoch don’t get it. Life as he knew it is over, gone… never coming back again. Knowledge is power, increasingly resting is with the people, due to internet, communications and access to everyone. The centralized news monopoly is dying and he should realize that. But rather playing with the new reality he choose to fight the ‘wind’… just like RIA. And we all know except the dinosaurs, that they are about to disappear and something new is replacing the old model.
Good old Schrumpeter called it “creative destruction” – exemplified by the Bird Phoenix, rising from the ashes…. to be poetic 😉
Well every business should try to maximize profits. What will be interesting to see is if subscription payments end up being higher than advertising revenues driven by Google. He is betting they will I am guessing they won’t.
I suspect he just didn’t understand the question, he probably doesn’t understand how google works. Doesn’t sound like he wants to block stories from coming up in a Google search, rather just stop full stories appearing on google and accessible freely.
Talk about being out of touch. He talks like he is the only game in town? Where is his leverage? Give it up Murdoch!
Murdoch knows exactly what he is doing.
In this case, he is trying to lead competitors (aka other news sites) astray and dupe them into following a strategy he doesn’t actually intend to follow.
Then he buys up weakened competitors who fell flat on their faces that drank his Kool-Aid.
Classic market-leader dupes dummy also-rans into failed strategy to lower their stock prices for acquisition.
A well-known marketer once said that to be successful, always say in speeches and media events that your marketing and IT budgets are double what they actually are (get them to spend too much) and talk up fatal ideas you don’t plan to follow to soften up competition.
Isn’t the news paper deathwatch banner missing from this? time to pull the plug imho.
What is google? Sounds like a two bit player in search. I get all my news from bing+Twitter searches.
I mean a search engine that doesn’t let you search Twitter feeds at this late date is utterly worthless.
How is the video search on google? Oh it is worthlessly bad?
Well how about mobile search? You mean googles entire mobile search strategy is based on vendor lock in, on the iPhone?
Yeah, good luck with that!
Anyone want to talk map search?
And now people are opting out of google search?
Perkel should rethink that droid purchase. Looks like google is circling the drain of irrelevancy to me, in Internet time.
LOL… taking Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda mongering content off the internet would be a great move forward. I’m all for him blocking Google searches, it’s the best thing he has suggested in years.
So, he going to block people from viewing ” the real news ” . This is a great thing. I hope he succeeds.
Good luck with that. Newspapers are the 21st century equivalent of town criers.
Murdock just wants to control all the media. He just wants people to get their news from Fox Propaganda. Screw him! Cut this bass turd off!
I blame the people advising him, obviously a group of fucktards. This guy has nothing I want or would pay for.
Yes Rupert, please take your shit off of Google. I want to make sure I don’t see it.
The point the article is missing, is that The Wall Street Journal offers paid services for professional market analysis and for reports and editorial from market insiders. Qualitative analysis. And we are happy to pay for that, it is in our economic interests, it is cheaper than hiring consultants. What we get for free, and Google Reader, is a different product all together.
Although Murdoch is living in the past and is totally unwilling to adapt to a new medium, I agree that it’s probably hard to make a good, profitable news organisation based on advertising alone. One may even argue that there are issues regarding neutrality with such a model. In fact I’d be willing to pay for a subscription to a good electronic newspaper. No problem there.
But of course it’s silly to say that Google and other aggregators are the enemy of people trying to make money the “old fashion way”. Murdoch should be grateful for the traffic they drive to their content. And when the printed paper is gone in a few years, they will depend even more heavily upon them.
Murdoch and Sumner Redstone are dinosaurs and need to go away.
In other news Murdoch cut off one leg today to beat up his competition with.
He says Wall St. Journal is blocked currently. Not so.
If you want to read WSJ use Goolgle news: cut WSJ headline and paste into Google window. Full story, yeah.
One thing I tend to notice with WSJ is that many of the stories aren’t that deep anyway. A story might have good lead paragraphs that make me switch over to google to read the rest. When I do there are only 3-4 more paragraphs in the story.
The constrained amount of space in a physical newspaper make stories seem longer. Much better content is available on the web for free.
Hint: The last few paragraphs in a newspaper story are the least important. Don’t bother paying for them.
21,
Sadly, for a business, a couple of million isn’t very much. Consider a small magazine employing 10 people (an art person/graphic artist, 2 staff editors, a managing/production editor, a publisher, an EiC, and 4 sales people for the world) That’s over a half of a million there for salaries alone (and that’s with nobody getting more than 100,000 a year). What about benefits (add your favorite health-care rant here)? What about rent and physical plant maintenance? What about Travel & Expenses? Web hosting? Other infrastructure? IT? Light and heat? That is only for a web-based publication, not even considering the effort for print.
New York Times put up articles for free, and it’s stock is way down, along with all the other newspapers. WSJ charged for its content online over ten years ago, and is now #1 in paid circulation.
Rupert Murdoch said he would make WSJ free, but instead is making everything else like WSJ.
How is Google putting up subscription articles form the WSJ for free? Isn’t that a copyright violation?
Just do it now! don’t wait!
@MikeN
The Wall Street Journal is not just any other paper. It’s content is actually worth something to people. Can you say the same thing about a paper like the New York Times or Washington Post? If you are “niche” paper you maybe able to get away with putting your content behind a pay wall. Time will tell.
Somebody will step compete with a web/mobile only competitor to the WSJ. Takers?
The bottom line is that the business model is all about access to information. The WSJ and a few other specialty-content pubs can get away with this, as their clientele is willing to pay for the targeted news. This will almost certainly also be threatened as more people go to independent analysts online.
I have maintained for years that nobody pays for content, and that filtering and analysis is the only real value-add. The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio.
Block Google = Disappear
Murdoch assumes I care about any news portal he owns.
If Murdoch blocks Google or other Web access to WSJ and his other newspapers, he would simply be in the same state as all those other newspapers that have disappeared: bankrupt or just unimportant.
However: if he blocks his newspapers, can he block Fox News while he’s at it? Worthless channel…
It’ll be a great momentous day for the human race if all of Rupert Fucktard’s sites were blocked. I already do it locally, so by all means, please do it.
To the stillborn retard that wrote this drivel at The Guardian, the phrase is “It’s IN the cards” you jackass!
I only read one paper religiously, but Google (and other search engines) allow me to pick the most relevant stories to whatever shiny object has my interest.
Google exposes your business to me, something that I would never see if your subscription only…and frankly irrelevant to my point of view.
You have me in your publication’s website reading an article, possibly clicking through a relevant ad…and you owe that to the search engine.
It’s not their fault your business model is broken and you are having problems monetizing what no longer works.
Watch your Murdoch’s Internet traffic shrivel and die…just think of the money he could save on servers and bandwidth!