Rupert Murdoch has spent months complaining that Google is ruining the newspaper business, and now he wants to do something about it.
But, his proposal is a gamble, and one that could hurt News Corp instead of helping it.
Murdoch is considering removing News Corp’s news from Google’s Web search results, and is talking to Microsoft Corp about listing the stories with its Bing search engine instead. Microsoft would pay for the privilege, sources have told Reuters, but it was not clear how much.
If Murdoch pulled this off, he will likely be followed by other newspaper publishers looking for ways to make money when all the old ones are waning in the digital age.
Newspaper owners resent Google because the Internet company makes money from the advertisements that it displays next to news search results.
News Corp’s proposal is a way to get a cut of the action. Risks include destroying ad revenue most news websites depend on if traffic goes down because Google users can’t find the stories. It’s also not clear how regulators would feel about such a move.
“You’re immediately cutting off audience,” said Jeff Jarvis, media blogger and author of the book “What Would Google Do?”
Google brings as much as 14 percent of incoming traffic to News Corp’s U.S. news websites, including the New York Post and Fox News, Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay estimated.
If News Corp blocked access to Google, he wrote in a note to investors, it would hurt only News Corp.
Many people find their news on Google, which has 65 percent of the U.S. search market according to comScore. Newspaper publishers whose websites depend on advertising sales want lots of visitors, and need Google to supply them.
Google provides news organizations about 100,000 clicks a minute, said company spokesman Gabriel Stricker. “Each of those visits offers a business opportunity for the publishers to show ads, win loyal readers and sell subscriptions,” he said.
Making Microsoft’s Bing search engine the only way to look for news would slice away visitors and lower the amount of money news websites could charge advertisers.
There is little chance people will abandon Google, which has become such a giant that its name is also a verb.
“Consumers do not expect search engines to be exclusive,” Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk wrote. “If they can’t find something through search, it may as well not exist.”
WEB SUICIDE?
Microsoft declined to comment, but in theory would like partnering with News Corp to increase Bing’s share of the lucrative search advertising market at Google’s expense. Microsoft had a 10 percent share of the U.S. search market in September, according to comScore.
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