Murdoch guns for Google

happygeek 0 Tallied Votes 228 Views Share

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has called upon other newspaper publishers to stop Google from taking their content for free. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Murdoch suggested that Google might like to consider either just publishing headlines along with a brief line or two, or alternatively perhaps actually pay up to publish work produced by others. Murdoch complained that while Internet advertising for Google had been "a river of gold" the content was "being taken mostly from the newspapers".

Murdoch is currently coming under fire from many online for his move towards erecting paywalls for his online news content. The Wall Street Journal is already a subscription only publication, and soon both The Times and Sunday Times will follow that example.

He told his audience that not only would he like to see Google News include a subscription form for the Wall Street Journal rather than linking to the full stories it publishes, but that he expects more newspapers to also take a paywall stance.

I'm with Shane Richmond who is Head of Technology (Editorial) for Telegraph Media Group and says "I can’t help wondering whether Rupert Murdoch is simply hoping to win the fight on rhetoric alone. The alternative is that he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about".

WASDted 184 Practically a Master Poster Featured Poster
happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

I have a feeling it will get even hotter in the weeks and months to come. It will be interesting to see if any other newspaper publishers follow the Murdoch lead, if they hang back and see how successful or otherwise the Times/Sunday Times paywall experiment is, and if none or not enough do follow whether Murdoch backtracks.

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