News Corp sending smoke signals to embark on warpath
It looks like war clouds are hovering over the media kingdom of Rupert Murdoch.
No sooner has News Corp great chieftain spoken that he must build the Great Paywall to protect his global media empire from thieving search engine raiders, the Telegraph.co.uk site reported Friday that the removal of News Corp's content from Google, their main antagonist, may come sooner than later.
After Murdoch's bluster against Google last weekend during an interview with Sky News Australia, News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller was reported to have told the Monaco Media Forum on Friday that his chief was ready to block Big Goog's access to their sites soon.
And, mind you, they are not going it alone. News Corp, according to Miller, would lead the media industry in this direction. It will be interesting to know who else will join the "Block Google" march under the flapping banner of Murdoch's army.
Here's quoting Miller from the Telegraph report:
“We will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things like news bureaus in Kabul.”
According to the Telegraph, Miller told the forum:
“There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate...It will play out in the next two years. We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognised online [by giving it away for free) so something needs to happen...I don’t believe the media industry can continue to exist in this way.”
That was something to perk up newshounds who sensed blood. Soon enough everyone is buzzing that the empire has raised the war cry and is ready to strike back.
And just for assurance that News Corp knows what it's in for, Miller added that The Times and The Sun newspapers in the UK could survive both economically and audience-wise without Google driving web traffic to its sites.
"Looks to me like this whole thing is just keeping News Corp in the news because there may not be any real news here since there is no plan and no definition coupled with vague threats and dates of even more vague threats."
But...
With all this goings-on, will it make the other big empire blink?
The guys up there in Mountain View, I guess, are nonchalantly going about their business. Care for a cuppa?
