The latest maneuvering of News corporation with Microsoft’s Bing is a fascinating evolution in the world of search partnerships. The essence of this is that News Corp wants to keep more of it’s earned visitor revenue without paying a toll to Google. The process is to de-index the major news properties out of Google (e.g. Wall St Journal, New York Post)
Doing Math of News Corps Threatened Block
(New York Times, Nov 16th, 2009)
I find it odd that it’s taken this long for content producers to wake from their slumber and realize that Google’s been eating a significant portion of their lunch. Perhaps not the entrée – but a healthy appetizer at least. Consider the fact that the first revenue bite from Google – is usually the paid search results that sit nestled to the right of the snipped content . Google has been labeled “parasitic” by Mr Murdoch. Harsh words and not entirely fair – since Google also accounts for maintaining much of News Corps search originated traffic.
Google has been boiling the newspaper honchos in tepid water for a while – now it’s heating up as their revenue dwindles – they’re looking to jump. They now the need to re-tool and frankly – it’s a difficult scenario. News Corp hopes to align with someone (well it could be actually anyone that can cover their perceived loss in revenue to search engines) who will in turn de-index against Google. Now if Bing does this – it would be a very savvy move – but can they really afford it. In turn can News Corp afford it. There is a huge opportunity cost here and it looks like they may lose a lot of readers to spite Google.
Playing to the side of the news media now – I have been wondering when this issue would surface. Google produces literally none of it’s own content and yet it makes billions by making other people’s content accessible. It’s a brilliant middle-man play. However it’s not much of a marketplace when there’s only one major one player and he’s got pretty broad shoulders. Their shoulders cover a lot of search traffic and place a dark shadow on anyone who doesn’t want to aggregate their information through Google.
So News Corp – welcome to a town halfway between Rock and Hard Place. They say content is king, though the latest rants by News Corp indicate that they don’t like Google managing the drawbridge to their media castle.
Skywave Media 