News Corp to de-index contents from Google

Microsoft Corp has had early stage talks with News Corp about a tie up, which would involve News Corp getting paid to take its news websites off Google Inc. News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has said he wants to make people pay for access to his news websites. Other publishers including The New York Times are also searching for ways to charge for news online, convinced that they must not give news through search engines such as Google and Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft has also talked with other online publishers about removing their sites from Google, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the development.

One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

Microsoft’s interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content.

“This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan.

Microsoft, which relaunched its search engine as Bing this year, has been looking for ways to challenge market leader Google.

But the biggest beneficiary of the tussle could be the newspaper industry, which has yet to construct a reliable online business model that adequately replaces declining print and advertising revenues.

Earlier this year, it signed a 10-year global web search partnership with Yahoo, a deal that U.S. and European antitrust regulators are evaluating.

Microsoft could not reached for comment late on Sunday. News Corp declined to comment. The source is anonymous because the talks are not public.

Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, has said that the company is prepared to spend heavily for many years to make Bing a serious rival to Google.

Microsoft has sought to differentiate Bing by drawing in material not found elsewhere, though has not demanded exclusivity from content partners. Bing accounted for 9.9 per cent of searches in the US in October, up from 8.4 per cent at its launch, according to ComScore.

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