A.H. Belo and MediaNews to pull content from Google?

Posted by Jennifer Lush on November 25, 2009 at 11:49 AM

Amidst rumours of discussions between News Corp and Microsoft about a possible deal for publishers to have their articles listed exclusively on Bing, Microsoft's revamped search engine, executives at MediaNews and A.H. Belo have revealed that they too might pull their content from Google.

Whilst News Corp chief, Rupert Murdoch, seems to be gaining supporters in his battle against the search giant, whom he has accused of "stealing stories", A.H. Belo and MediaNews have released more cautious statements on the issue and have not ruled Google out altogether. Instead, MediaNews CEO, Dean Singleton, says his chain will only block the search engine from crawling content that it charges for online and will probably continue to allow it to link to free content on the company's newspaper sites.

A.H. Belo also confirmed that it would begin trialling paywalls within the next six months, at either the Dallas Morning News, Providence Journal, or Riverside Press-Enterprise, according to Bloomberg News. Whilst A.H. Belo executive vice-president James Moroney says his company hasn't made any definite decisions yet, the introduction of the paywalls could potentially coincide with the removal of the paper's content from Google News.

There has been much speculation over whether or not such a move would help or hinder news websites. Google News' Josh Cohen told paidContent in an interview recently that if news websites plan to charge for their contents, it is even more vital to have a relationship with the search engine: "If you're making content paid, it's as important if not more important to make sure that you're still discoverable from search," he said.

If plans with Microsoft go through and publishers can forge a worthwhile deal for their content, the result could mean a dent in Google News' armour. However, serious doubts remain over whether or not the move can sucessfully be pulled off.

Alan Mutter believes that given Google's market share is so much larger than Bing's that Microsoft would have to pay newspapers a significant amount to make it worth deserting Google, an amount that it would not be worth Microsoft paying. He questions whether newspapers would risk " denying their articles to 71% of the world's search traffic?"

Mutter suggests the threats of signing on with Microsoft are more about convincing Google to pay, and despite the upper hand Google appears to currently have, if more publishers get on board, perhaps they will be forced to consider the option.

Source: paidContent