Microsoft and News Corp in Google attack
MICROSOFT has held talks with News Corp about removing the latter’s online news content from Google’s search results and listing them exclusively on its Bing search engine instead.
Talks are still at an early stage, with a question mark over the terms and payment for the deal.
The giant media companies are said to be trying to build a broad ark of defence against Google, a plan that has seen them approach other major online publishers about removing their sites from the search engine.
The report comes two weeks after News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch told Sky News Australia that he planned to block popular search engines including Google and Bing from listing content from his company’s news sites in order to get readers to pay for online content.
Murdoch has called for an end to search engine listings for his company’s news content because search engines make money from his content through their advertising, while he does not get paid a cut of their revenues.
A deal between Microsoft and news websites could put Bing in a much better position to compete against Google, which has around 65 per cent market share, compared to just under 10 per cent market share for Bing.
Google and other search engines say they are within their legal rights to post excerpts of news stories, which help point traffic to news sites.
Although Google would not comment on the talks, the company said it has a clear policy of respecting the wish of content owners who do not want their material to show up in Google search results.