Will Murdoch Block Search Engines ?

There is possibility that you will never be able to find the content produced by the Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and a number of other organizations through search engines such as Google, Yahoo...because Rupert Murdoch indicated that his News Corp. may block search engines.

News Corp. is the world's second largest media group. As a result, Murdoch's interview with Sky News editor David Speers should be noticed, as Mr. Murdoch said "We'd rather have fewer people coming to our website, but paying." And finally, in response to a question regarding why News Corp doesn't just block search engines, he said "Well, I think we will..."

In fact, there is a tricky part: Mr. Murdoch cited the Wall Street Journal's current approach to pay walls and subscriptions as an example of what he'd like to implement on a larger scale, but it's.... actually possible to access WSJ stories using Google. It's only when clicking around within the WSJ that you run into truncated articles.

There has been some sort of middle ground pointed out for Mr. Murdoch to arrive. Danny Sullivan, an article writer for webpronews.com said "Publishers can have Google News index the entire text of their article but NOT show the full story to visitors who come from Google (means you can only get a summary). They can also, if they choose, have only a small summary of their content indexed. That would allow News Corp.'s properties to WSJ without sacrificing loads of search traffic and becoming less visible to potential ad-clickers and paying customers.

About News Corp; as for a change might go through, Jon Miller, News Corp.'s Chief Digital Officer, gave a rough deadline by talking about "months and quarters - not weeks" at a conference yesterday. It can be understood that News Corp. wouldn't do anything drastic on its own, which may either be a polite way of contracting Murdoch's statements or a hint that the industry really is about to change.

About us; the readers that are always thirsty for information, any severe restriction to latest news could have deep impacts. And we are looking forward to Mr. Murdoch and News Corp's moves and hope for a win-win decision from them