Microsoft Might Pay News Corp to Delist from Google

It seemed so absurd just two weeks ago when Rupert Murdoch threatened to delist all News Corp sites from Google searches. And Google seemed to think it wasn’t a concern. Would a company deliberately remove its sites from the most widely used search engine? Well, the threat is becoming real and Microsoft wants to help the process along with a little money.

The Financial Times reports Microsoft and News Corp are in early talks to strike up a deal where Microsoft will pay the news giant to delist from all Google searches. That means the only way to search for news content from a slew of sites, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, Dow Jones Newswires and Fox News, would be through Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. News Corp also owns dozens of newspapers around the world, meaning that the choice to “de-index” from Google would affect sites worldwide.

The most surprising part comes when The Financial Times predicts the deal will "[set] the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.” That may be just a bit optimistic considering that it would take quite a lot to save the newspaper industry. Nevertheless, this deal, if it happens, could very well lead to a significant battle between search engines, one that could hurt our beloved view of the internet as a place of free-for-all information.

What other kinds of content providers will be able to demand search engines pay them to list? In a world where sites fight for every last pageview and advertising dollar, cutting off a source of those pageviews seems counterintuitive. Murdoch is right, people from search traffic don’t necessarily come back. And let’s be clear, this choice will not affect the traffic News Corp gets from users who navigate directly to their favorite news site daily or weekly, but it will cut off any additional traffic the sites got from search engines.

If someone wants to find, say, a Wall Street Journal story they heard about, are they going to remember they have to find it through Bing? More likely they’ll search for it on Google like they do everything else, and never find it. That’s one visitor News Corp loses, and consequently more advertising money lost. Can Microsoft’s fee make up for the loss in visitors? Presumably, Microsoft would also be required to push visitors to News Corp sites as part of the deal. Would Bing users appreciate having News Corp sites always returning at the top of search results?

Of course, Google will eventually be able to index the stories anyway. When other sites and blogs link to pages and stories from News Corp sites, Google will be able to index those stories through the linking sites.

Whether News Corp takes the bait from Microsoft or not, the concept of search engine sponsorship could have a significant impact on how we find information in the future. As one commenter observed, “If I can't find it on Google, it never existed.” It may sound trite, but it’s more than a joke. It’s the way we’ve come to think of the Internet. Can Rupert Mrurdoch really change that?

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