Murdoch versus Google

Just a heads up that I’ve blogged on the most recent updates on the Murdoch and Google saga on Left Foot Forward.

Have a look, I would welcome your thoughts.

Is Google more powerful than Murdoch?

After my post last week about Mr Murdoch and his dislike of online content aggregation tools, specifically Google, I was interested this article on TechCrunch as to whether NewsCorp could indeed hurt Google.

My point of view, especially after my detailed chat with my colleague Ged Carroll,  is that he can’t beat Google, but I think he can scare the bejesus out of Google shareholders and then make Google do something it doesn’t necessarily want to.

Theoretically, as was discussed in the TechCrunch article, if Murdoch can convince Bing, Microsoft’s aggregator, to pay for the aggregation rights of NewsCorp material, it could be worth removing NewsCorp from Google’s online rankings. If he can show he is earning more money from Bing, other news companies might follow suit. Then Google has problems.

By stepping up to Google, perhaps he hopes it back down and deal. This would clearly benefit NewsCorp. Like him or loathe him, he’s clever and he must have something up his sleeve.

According to cash alone, despite his many billions of dollars, Google should win this war, but Murdoch is one of a few people in the world that just by saying his name can cause people, especially in the media world, to shake in their boots. Not many people can get through to whatever Head of State he/she wants, when he wants. Murdoch can and that means something.

Thoughts?

And Murdoch wants us to pay for this?

By Nick Osborne

I know a lot of these points have been written about them before, but I thought it would be worth revisiting them and combining them. I thought of this when I saw the video from Sky News Australia that Alex Smith wrote about this morning on Labour List.

In this video at the Murdoch managed to call Obama racist, agreeing with the appalling Glenn Beck from FOX News. He also goes into detail about his plan to charge online users of his newspapers such as the Sun and the Times, stating that people should have to pay for all online news and the public has been getting away with free news for far too long. In a way, I can understand his point from a purely commercial point of view, we pay for exactly the same thing on paper after all.

And Murdoch wants us to pay for this?

But I resent having to pay for stories like the recent misspelled letter fiasco from Gordon Brown. What is especiallyawful about this is the fact that they couldn’t get the name right either, appalling. Thanks to Harry’s place for picking up this article. This was purely vindictive in my opinion.

Murdoch also had a go at Google for “stealing content” earlier in October and suggested that all aggregators were thieves.

Suffice to say, Murdoch managed to annoy plenty of people on his recent tour of Australia. As well as his rants about Obama and charging for news, in separate interviews (given to Murdoch owned newspapers The Australian and Melbourne’s Herald Sun), he called Kevin Rudd delusional and implied that he had better watch out in the coming election year by pointing to the anti-Gordon Brown sentiment in the UK media, hinting at the Sun’s conversion to the Tories.

We all know the media has huge power over the will of the people through the media, but is Murdoch essentially weilding his power over Heads of State? Apparently Murdoch doesn’t think much of Rudd for attempting to change global thinking regarding climate change and also called him over-sensitive.

To be honest, I don’t know what scares me more; the fact that Murdoch thinks he has this power, or the fact that he probably does.

Thoughts?