| There's a chance that the content produced by the Wall Street
Journal, the New York Post, and a number of other important
organizations will soon become impossible to find using Google. Rupert
Murdoch indicated in a recent interview that News Corp. may block
search engines.
News Corp. is the world's second largest media group. It owns enough
stuff that even hitting the highlights would take far too much time.
(Wikipedia has an 861-word entry titled "List of assets owned by News Corporation" if you're feeling adventurous.)
Murdoch's interview with Sky News editor David Speers could be of huge
significance, then. In it (the relevant part of the conversation
starts around the 3:10 mark), Murdoch said, "We'd rather have fewer
people coming to our website, but paying." In reference to "search
people," he next added, "They don't suddenly become loyal readers of
our content."
Finally, in response to a question
regarding why News Corp. doesn't just block search engines, Murdoch
said, "Well, I think we will . . ."
But here's the tricky part: Murdoch cited the Wall Street Journal's
current approach to pay walls and subscriptions as an example of what
he'd like to implement on a larger scale, and it's actually possible to
access WSJ stories using Google. It's only when clicking around within
the WSJ that you run into truncated articles.
So we - and a lot of industry decision-makers - will see what happens.
Whichever way Murdoch leans, he definitely has the power to start a
trend.
UPDATE: Danny Sullivan
has pointed out a sort of middle ground at which Murdoch might arrive:
"Publishers can have Google News index the entire text of their
articles but NOT show the full story to visitors who come from Google
(for Google's web search, that's not an option - but you can provide
summary pages). They can also, if they choose, have only a small
summary of their content indexed."
That would allow News Corp.'s properties to by and large stick to the
WSJ model without sacrificing loads of search traffic and becoming less
visible to potential ad-clickers and paying customers. A smart
compromise, perhaps.
As for when a change might go through, Jon Miller, News Corp.'s Chief
Digital Officer, gave a rough deadline by talking about "months and
quarters - not weeks" at a conference yesterday. But according to Emma Barnett,
he also indicated that News Corp. wouldn't do anything drastic on its
own, which may either be a polite way of contradicting Murdoch's
statements or a hint that the industry really is about to change. Doug Caverly - webpronews.com
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