So maybe Rupert Murdoch isn’t the out of touch geezer everyone’s painting him to be.
When Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp, accused Google of stealing, what he really meant to say was “Pay me!”
No one wanted to believe it, but there was a method to his madness when he called search engines “content kleptomaniacs” and started making silly statements like: “We rather have fewer people coming to our websites, but paying.”
What seemed like crazy talk, in a world where Google rules everything, it turns out Murdoch’s finger waving is becoming a crafty strategic play against the search empire. According to a recent news report, by the Guardian News, Murdoch is in talks with Microsoft to make an exclusive content deal with up-and-comer search engine Bing. This is another win for Bing, who is in line to gain 30% market share (vs. Google’s 65%) when they take over Yahoo’s search functions in 2010.
This is also good news and certainly a game changer for traditional media outlets, like newspapers and magazines, where revenue is dismal. If search engines are willing to pay for content, maybe print media has a chance of surviving this media global warming.
It’s hard to believe and even harder to admit, for me, but Murdoch just may be an Internet revolutionary who saves print from the big bad Internet. Wow.
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