Following up on our previous posts regarding content from news sites appearing in short form on sites like Google News and other blogs and news/information sites, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft are reportedly in talks to pay the media organization to “de-list” its sites from Google.
Reportedly, Microsoft is approaching other news organizations with the same offer in an attempt to grab market share from Google. In October, Microsoft’s Bing accounted for just under 10% of online searches according to comScore.
Actions like this could prove to be a boon to the ailing newspaper industry, who has been struggling with declining print readership and advertising revenues for years. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has said he will use all legal channels available to prevent Google from “stealing” news stories.
News aggregators and search engines like Google contend that collecting short pieces of articles – usually the headline and first two sentences – is allowed under the “fair use” doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act.
Microsoft’s move is also seen as a direct assault on Google, putting pressure on the leading search engine to pay newspapers for content.
Google is downplaying this news, saying they don’t need news content to survive and that it constitutes just a sliver of their revenue.