Google To Lose Murdoch’s Newspapers To Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine?

Ever since the induction of Bing by Microsoft, they have been clear of their intentions to overthrow Google as the kingpin of search engines. But now the rivalry is stepping up another gear due to one Rupert Murdoch, Head of News Corp. Which is responsible for perhaps most notably in the UK, the Times and the Sun newspapers which in recent years have expanded their empire to the world wide web raking in 10% of their revenue from the Internet.

It is the Internet of course, which has sparked this latest debate between Murdoch and giants Google as he revealed plans to block Google searches from displaying any of his news articles. He claims it is not legal for search engines to display his articles and headlines as ‘news’.

This comes from a man who not so long ago claimed he wanted to charge users for reading his articles online as he was losing income due to people preferring the free method of reading online compared to buying an actual newspaper.

Search engines such as Google and Bing have taken to displaying site specific search boxes on websites which has provided great revenue for owners of the sites in a time where advertising revenues have fallen.

Murdoch’s plan to remove his news articles from search engines could lead to some sort of bidding war between Bing and Google particularly, as they attempt to strike deals with newspapers such as Murdoch’s to display articles on their site. At this time, it would be a great move for Murdoch in terms of finance because, as I mentioned before, advertising revenues have fallen, so the amount of income he could bring in from such deals could be phenomenal. Predictions of such figures have been close to £500 million which of course would be a nice bonus for the already billionaire Murdoch.

The worry for Murdoch would be that blocking such searches would not redirect searches, rather than just drive them away. Is it likely that people would adjust their searching habits in order to find news or would they simply forget about it?

The phrase ‘Google it’ is banded around a lot these days as I believe it is fair to say that Google have a bit of a monopoly when it comes to search engines. I doubt there are many people who would rather ‘Bing it’. Based on this knowledge I find it hard to believe that many people would switch to an engine such as Bing, even if they do hold exclusive rights to these articles and search facilities within a website and some would perhaps just become increasingly annoyed at restricted Google searches in the future. Clearly Microsoft could use this opportunity to effectively buy the access to News Corp. newspapers which could help bolster and further increase their search engine share, especially after they’ve recently had increases which show that Bing is more popular than Yahoo since Microsoft re-branded their search engine from Live Search.

This debate certainly does pose many questions. Would people even know why they could no longer find these articles? Would this drive people back to the old fashioned newspaper? Particularly if Murdoch does introduce his plans to charge users for accessing certain online content.

So what search engine do you prefer? Google, Bing or something else? Would you consider changing if one of them were given exclusive rights to certain news companies’ articles? Take a look at the following interview that Rupert Murdoch recently gave on this very subject – admittedly it was to a news channel he owns, but let us know what you think, is he right? Completely wrong? Or somewhere in between?

Via – BBC, Boing Boing & TechRadar

Related Pages:

1. Bing Search Engine More Popular Than Yahoo?
2. Microsoft and Yahoo Finally Strike A Search Engine Deal
3. Bing TV Advert
4. Microsoft Office 2010 To Include Free Online Web Versions
5. Google Labs Adds Similar Images and News Timeline Search

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