Rupert Murdoch to take news off Google

Bangalore: Rupert Murdoch, the media czar who heads prime news sources like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, 20th Century Fox and Fox News, has threatened Google that he will soon pull the plug to make his sites disappear from Google listing.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, Murdoch accused Google, Microsoft, and others of "stealing" his company's content. When asked why he doesn't pull his web sites from Google's search results he replied, "I think we will. But that's when we start charging."

So far the company has been earning money through advertising content, but now Murdoch and other News Corporation executives have said that they intend to charge readers and viewers. 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. What's the point of having someone come occasionally who likes a headline they see in Google? 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," reported CNET.

Google has said that it feels obligated to help media companies because it needs their content. Google responded to Murdoch's comments in a report by The Telegraph. "Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found," Google said in a statement. "Very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't."

Google says that it only takes two lines of computer code added to a file called "robots.txt," which every website uses to tell search engines where, or not, to wander. So if it is so easy to do so then why isn't Murdoch pulling the plug. The decision to do so can be a big gamble and can backfire badly for Murdoch. Once Murdoch takes his sites off Google, internet advertising based revenue will almost disappear.

On the other hand, paying to read news article might bring in more revenue than advertising. It will also bring an end to the content being copied by other news websites. If a news website is the first with a scoop, it will soon be buried under the avalanche of copies and rewrites that sucks any value out of being ahead of the crowd.

In that regard, Murdoch's desire to get away from the roundabout of Google News is sensible as he has an old-fashioned vision of the value of journalism.

Google, meanwhile, will remain unmoved. "Google delivers more than a billion consumer visits to newspaper websites each month. These visits offer the publishers a business opportunity, the chance to hook a reader with compelling content, to make money with advertisements or to offer online subscriptions," wrote Google Senior Business Product Manager Josh Cohen in a blog post. "The truth is that news publishers, like all other content owners, are in complete control when it comes not only to what content they make available on the web, but also who can access it and at what price."

The readers will be most affected by this, who by now are used to free content and e-paper culture. Paying to read online news might not appeal to majority of readers and Murdoch will have to venture into unchartered territory to rope in revenue.