Could Murdoch be planning to precipitate a Google vs Bing war?

Posted by Emma Heald on November 19, 2009 at 11:21 AM

Poynter media business analyst Rick Edmonds has suggested that part of Rupert Murdoch's strategy in threatening to remove News Corp content from Google's indexes is to make an alternative agreement with Microsoft's search engine Bing. It is a "theory bouncing through the blogosphere," he says, "with scant evidence but a certain logic," even though Murdoch himself has suggested that such a deal might not be possible.

Edmonds believes, as others do, that "simply withdrawing from Google or erecting a higher pay wall would hurt News Corp more than it would hurt Google." But if Murdoch came to an exclusive agreement with Bing to carry News Corp content, it would offer significant advantages to both parties. News Corp could charge Microsoft for its content, and Microsoft would have something that Google did not, which might help it up its market share.

And of course, if Bing gets involved with paying to use content, and if others were to follow News Corp down this road, then Google might come up with a counter-offering, Edmonds suggests. Such a contest, that Associated Press CEO Tom Curley referred to as a "war" between the search engines, could lead to better terms for news organisations.

There are those who believe that Murdoch would just be making a big mistake by removing his papers' content from the largest search engine, but maybe News Corp does have a bigger plan. And it seems that the AP, at least, is considering a similar strategy. Whether or not such a move would be successful from a financial standpoint is very unclear: it would depend on how much extra traffic Bing could generate. Some, like Danny Sullivan, think not. But it is definitely something to think about for those news organisations who are dissatisfied with Google.

Source: Poynter