In an interview with Sky News Australia, Rupert Murdoch said his newspapers – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – are considering plans to block Google (GOOG) entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.
In recent months, Murdoch has accused Google of “kleptomania” and acting as a “parasite” for including News Corp. (NWS) content in Search Engine’s News pages. But when asked why News Corp. execs had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google’s search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said that 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.”
Google has clarified its position in response to Murdoch’s threat to block the search engine from his newspapers’ websites.
[via Telegraph:] “A spokesman for the search giant said: “Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute. “Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so 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.”
It’s really mind-boggling how some people manage to reach such stature in the business world when their inadequacy of competence is so obvious. You would think they would use a cerebral approach to solve business equations. Judging from this interview, that does not appear to be the case.
Trying to pass the bill to the very consumers who make up the powerbase of your business, is just dumb.
Bye rupert!!! And good riddance!