Jared Newman at PC World:
Once News Corps’ Web Sites go behind a paywall, chief executive Rupert Murdoch suggested that they’ll disappear from searches on Google and other engines.
Murdoch was responding to Sky News political editor David Speers, who asked why News Corp. hasn’t blocked search engines from indexing sites. “Well, I think we will, but that’s when we start charging,” Murdoch said.
In August, Murdoch said that all News Corp. Web sites will go behind a paywall by next summer, a bold move as many Web sites have abandoned their unsuccessful paid subscription strategies, relying on eyeballs and advertising revenue instead.
I’m not sure Murdoch fully understood Speers’ question about blocking search engines, because he then adds “We do it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling.” Many reports on Murdoch’s comments suggest that Murdoch will block search engines entirely, but that’s not the case with the Wall Street Journal. You can still find occasional stories by searching Google News.
Regardless of what Murdoch meant, the bigger point remains that he’s not interested in readers who find News Corp. articles through search engines. “Who knows who they are or where they are,” Murdoch said, referring to search-driven visitors, “and they don’t suddenly become loyal readers of our content.”
Murdoch’s philosophy of getting money from loyal readers is still a huge gamble, because there’s no guarantee those readers will stick around once they’re forced to pay. Think of it this way: If we’ve been friends for five years, and I suddenly tell you that our friendship requires a lot of work on my end, and that I’ll need money to keep it going, will you happily pony it up because you value what I provide, or will you look for someone new?
John C. Abell at Wired News:
Rupert Murdoch has made this kind of noise before (and he gets wrong the extent of actual public access to Wall Street Journal content online, which is 100%). But in an interview with Sky News the News Corp chairman sounds a lot like he would be inclined to take up Google on its oft-repeated suggestion — to all old media titans who think they are being ripped off — to programatically withhold content from the search giant’s massive gene pool of news links.
We all know that these are uncertain times for traditional publishers. Newspaper circulation is cratering; the latest numbers show it down another 10% in the last year, and Murdoch’s New York Post is down nearly 30% in the past 2-1/2 years).
Many newspaper executives grumble that the internet’s link economy is to blame. But we’ll believe that New Corp intends privatize all of its digital content when we see it. This just might be Murdoch’s way of goading competitors to beat him to a punch he never intends to throw. Nevertheless, he talks the talk very well.
“We’d rather have fewer people coming to our web sites — but paying,” Murdoch tells Sky News Australia, explaining that “the fact is, there isn’t enough advertising in the world to go around to make all the websites profitable.”
Ryan Tate at Valley Wag:
This isn’t the first time Murdoch, 78, and his lieutenants have been made unfriendly noises about Google; they’ve recently attacked the search engine as a “parasite” with “promiscuous” users. This hostility must seem perfectly sensible if you’re an old man who has your secretary find and print up Web pages on your behalf. But here’s a pro tip, Rupert: Old media doesn’t instant message those pages to your assistant’s Twitter, via Blogger, on AOL. She just does what your newspaper reporters and Fox News producers and sales executives and tabloid editors and attack-dog flacks and mid-level accountants do all the time every day: Sticks a hot, throbbing search query into Google and gets busy with a bunch of strange website she doesn’t subscribe to. Welcome to the internet.
Stan Schroeder at Mashable:
It proves that Murdoch is sticking with the old model of how news and information is disseminated, and doesn’t plan to change it. The problem is, things don’t work the way they used to any more. Sometimes, a visitor will come to a news site or a blog and won’t even know where he is; he might think he’s still on Facebook (
) or MySpace (
). And he won’t be interested in anything on the site except that tiny bit of information that made him click on the link. Sometimes, the conversation will develop around your article, but not on your site; it may develop on Twitter (
) or Digg (
E.D. Kain at The League:
Rupert Murdoch, media mogul extrordinaire, has decided that links coming from the search engine monolith Google are parasitic and should be banned outright. Yes – what most of us online strive for – links from everywhere and especially Google – Murdoch has decided actually hurts his business model. This really, really confuses the hell out of me.
I was always under the impression that links pointing people to your content improved the visibility of that content – paywall or no. I guess, one way or another, this move will be a great experiment for the online news model.
UPDATE: Conor Friedersdorf and Julian Sanchez at Bloggingheads
