Murdoch may block Google searches

Murdoch may block Google searches

news.bbc.co.uk

Rupert Murdoch has said he will try to block Google from using news content from his companies.

The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google's search indexes, including Google News.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Seems like a stupid idea, going after the search engines?

He will find it hard to attract advertisers if he does this, and it still doesn't solve the issue of falling revenue due to the internet.

He is a dinosaur of the last century who really cannot see that the future is web based.

He should move with the times and adapt his business strategy to suit, or he'll go the way of the dinosaurs too!

I prefer the latter!

Kiwifoot.




news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I must applaud him for helping to take his entertainment programs and nooze out of the mainstream.

He already tried pay for read online and that failed miserably, we'll see how this works out for him.

Eeeh... so he doesn't want people to find his companies articles? Isn't that kind of stupid?

Actually, Google should do us all a favor and block all of his rah rah Mainstream Mickey Mouse content. Doing so would make Google a much better search engine in the long run. People who make it a point to avoid Murdoch's one sided garbage would no longer have to waste time sorting through junk to find something of substance.

[edit on 9-11-2009 by SphinxMontreal]

reply to post by kiwifoot

Murdoch may block Google searches

The whole idea is to remove control of the internet from the people... or the user, and place it in the hands of the corporate and government. As it stands right now, they can call it copyright law and such and then, render the web into what amounts to a glorified TV set.

One day... if they have their way, you will have access to commercials, buying things and corporate news.

Beyond that... all you can do is look. Touching... aka: interactions, will be illegal.

reply to post by redoubt

Beyond that... all you can do is look. Touching... aka: interactions, will be illegal.

..And the majority will probably bend over and accept it because the majority are all complacent.

Hmmm.

I think Murdcock (sp?) does not understand the internet.

However, it's hard to believe that Google and Murdoch won't reach an agreement.

Long live the darknet.

Originally posted by disfugured
reply to post by redoubt

 

Beyond that... all you can do is look. Touching... aka: interactions, will be illegal.

..And the majority will probably bend over and accept it because the majority are all complacent.

I agree with that comment.

I just hope that when they make their move to restrict the internet, there are enough dissenting voices to fight them.

My guess is that ATSers will be at the front of the queue!

Don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.

The unavailability of your 'news' would actually require it to *be* news in order for me to feel one iota of concern for its absence.



[edit on 9-11-2009 by loam]

The disappearance of News Corp empty content from Web searches wouldn't make a whiff of difference, except that they won't be getting any money from their pay per view model either. Right now they are getting some revenue from advertising. The 'new' model they will be getting MUCH less. You make more from a thousand page hits a day at 1 cent an ad that you do at one subscriber at 5 dollars a year and 3 hits a day.

The pay-per-view model failed in the internet. You can count on one hand the newspapers still trying to run with this. Rupert's Wall Street Journal is one, it has a specialist content and an affluent target readership. We have been there, done that.

Rupert seems to think that his content is 'better' than others (and well he should) and that Government funded organizations, like the BBC and and the ABC (Australia) 'steal' his content. Well, he is mind-bogglingly wrong on this. He says he's going to sue those guys; for what? using the United Press? Associated Press? their own extensive journalist networks? He has really lost the plot here.

Look, Rupert is just trying to make a buck. His newspapers classified sections used to be cash cows, and they aren't that anymore. He's just trying to claw that revenue back. So follow the money. Look at the assets he is buying, and how this step might be a way to tie those into the revenue stream.

But really he is grasping at straws. If Google and Bing! and the other search engines don't point readers at his site he isn't going to have any readers. If he has no readers he has no income. (I just saw the flaw in this reasoning... see the next paragraph).

UNLESS: he is trying to freeze the followers of Beck and O'Reilly and their acolytes into a coherent revenue stream. Faux News and Sky News can direct listeners to News Corp pay for content sites. If he gets the brainwashed followers of these clowns hearing nothing but the Faux Party line on TV and get them all paying into News Corp content providers, then 100% of their world view is coming straight from the Faux/News Corp bullion vaults. Think about that angle for a while...

Pretty hypocritical that his news company runs stories like these:

Senate Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet



and

Obama Wants to Control the Web



Yeah, Fox News! Complain about internet censorship and then turn around and do exactly what you're preaching about! It's almost as good as Beck's assault on the communist/fascist conspiratorial symbolism hidden in Rockefeller plaza, while neglecting to mention that his company's headquarters are based in that very plaza.

What a bunch of clowns. Can we start lumping Faux News back into the MSM, now, please?

[edit on 9-11-2009 by Someone336]

Originally posted by kiwifoot
I agree with that comment.

I just hope that when they make their move to restrict the internet, there are enough dissenting voices to fight them.

My guess is that ATSers will be at the front of the queue!

Oh, they've been hard at work on this issue for awhile now. They're using the copyright excuse to make it happen. Wikileaks.

He doesn't have to "try" to block anything. All you have to do is add a few things to your webpage to get Googlebots to ignore it, as far as I know.

meta name="Googlebot" content="nofollow" /> to the webpage.

I don't think most of you are considering where the "alternative" news sites get their news from: The mainstream sites.

... then they just add a bunch (more, perhaps) of speculation, opinion and bias before calling it "alternative."

If you don't believe me, just look at this forum. What do all of the stories turn into after they've been run through the ringer of our members.

If the main outlets start charging for the news, the alternative outlets will begin to drop off the radar due to finance and copyright trouble.

Outlets will start to follow suit after Murdoch, and this very Alternative News forum will cease to exist as it does.

Haha, at least that's what he is betting. What will really happen is a few alternative sources, or a few individuals with money to spare will get an account on his site and release the content all over the internet. Lawsuits will start, and doom and gloomers will say it's the end. It won't be.

There is no control over the internet.

News Piracy... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

The comments this story has garnered here: Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will" accurately mirror the sentiments of ATS members above. Looks like the public, tired of being dumbed down, are waking up to real journalism.

Great, Everybody line up and pay to get lied to and brainwashed from a narrow single point of view

He has been going on about this for a year now. Do it already or move on. I for one would never pay for the drivel they call news.

We should thank this bigoted retard for voluntarily curbing his misinformation and programming. May more newspapers go the same way.

This is the perfect way for the blogosphere to become the news carriers of the world. As soon as people have to pay to access the articles in online newspapers, they will turn to more workable solutions with more diverse opinions. Murdoch could go down in history as the man who killed off the newspaper!

Both the Government and big corporations have been looking for an excuse to regulate the Internet for years, and I expect them to work together to achieve it. They are both losing their ability to "tell us what we think" and can only maintain their hold through force.

etc...

Murdoch is negotiating with Microsoft to try to crash or crash through.

The plan is for News Ltd to pay Microsoft to pay Google to remove links to News Ltd content. Then Microsoft would get exclusive control of the News Ltd indexing.

Preliminary analysis from the pundits in Australia is that it won't make a blip on Google, Murdoch is throwing money down the plug hole, there is more than enough non-News Ltd content that people aren't going to switch to Bing just to get it.

The Wall Street Journal is the only property Murdoch has that can possibly pull people across, but most of those readers will just go directly to WSJ if they want it. Essentially he is just blowing off any traffic he might be getting on all his other sites.

Of course there will be a big marketing spiel on this, and Faux News will point people there, but it is fundamentally a loser. Murdoch has just lost it, I expect.

Is it just Google he's got an issue with? What about the other search engines? Seems like just Google and it's because he thinks they're "stealing" his content? Um.

Overall, who cares? If he doesn't want his stuff in Google, he should have his wish. Poof! Gone. Google seems to agree.

i told everyone what this was about almost a year ago.
Google is in bed to the obama administration..lock stock and barrel.
during election..9/10 articles they put on front page was obama..1 for mcain...they whole campaign

Obama administration want's to tell people not to watch fox new's ect....

So he is going after the source of obama's news outlet..GOOGLE.

I know dang well that is what all of this is about..he just wont tell you.

Silly idea, i despise both rupert murdoch and google equally though. No doubt they will reach an agreement,some money will be exchanged and nothing will come of it. Like i said though, no way is he silly enough to go through with this. It would hit his revenue hard in the long run i think. Google is a behemoth and continues to grow.

[edit on 24-11-2009 by Solomons]

And Murdoch will find that not only will he have lost revenue from printed media(ie his newspapers), he will now have lost revenue from his online media.

The amount of advertising dollars that NewsCorp likely gets from big corporations which advertise on NewsCorp sites, is probably a staggering amount.

Let me tell you, especially with most of the online Australian NewsCorp sites, the articles are nothing special, and are starting to resemble tabloid trash.

If they start charging to access these sites, they will lose millions of readers.

Google wont be affected. There are many, many more news sites online which NewsCorp does not own or control, which will still be indexed by Google.
The only ones who will lose out in such a situation will be NewsCorp.

But Murdoch is banking on readers actually being willing to pay for trashy reporting on his sites. Which imo, very few will do.

And with less readers, advertisers will begin to pull out.