Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. are discussing a deal to give Microsoft's Bing search engine exclusive rights to deliver search results and news pages from News Corp. publications, including The Wall Street Journal. Under the plan, Microsoft would pay News Corp. to block Google from indexing the media company's news websites. The idea is to help Bing chip away at Google's dominance, and give Murdoch's newspapers desperately needed income. But is declaring war on Google suicide? (Watch a report about Rupert Murdoch's proposed deal with Bing)
The search-engine war could revive newspapers: "Rupert Murdoch just may have stumbled onto a way to save the newspaper business," says Eric Savitz in Barron's. If the News Corp. CEO makes a deal with Microsoft's Bing, and Microsoft can get more publishers to remove their sites from Google's search index, newspaper content will suddenly have much greater value than it has today.
"Did Murdoch just figure out how to save the newspaper industry?"
Microsoft can't buy enough news to hurt Google: Microsoft can't buy enough news to dent Google's dominance, says Erick Schonfeld in TechCrunch. Rupert Murdoch can give Bing The Wall Street Journal and other News Corp. content, but Bing would have to add The New York Times and more to give folks "a big reason to switch." And that would cost a fortune Microsoft couldn't recoup.
"Bing tries to buy the news"
Newspapers don't need Google: Critics say Rupert Murdoch is bluffing, says Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, because cutting off Google would cost The Wall Street Journal 25 percent of its traffic. But Murdoch hardly makes any money off the Google crowd. If he "can get a better deal with Bing—at a time when Bing might be desperate to increase its news integrity—then we should take this threat seriously."
"Is Murdoch's bid to join Bing and ditch Google doomed?"
