By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
In my latest for the Guardian, I take a closer look at Rupert Murdoch’s dalliance with Microsoft, whose search engine, Bing, is emerging as the main competitor to Google.
The Murdoch-Microsoft story, which I first wrote about last week, got a huge boost yesterday in the Financial Times. Today the New York Times follows up.
Two things are clear about Rupert Murdoch’s pronouncements that he will build a pay wall around his sites, and that he’ll make them invisible to Google’s search engine.
First, he’ll fail utterly if that’s all there is. (How much would you pay for NYPost.com? Yeah, I thought so.) Second, given his track record as a media visionary, we should be cautious not to assume that’s all there is. As I told Chris Lefkow of Agence France Presse a few days ago, Rupe has a history of being two or three steps ahead of everyone else.
Now, it’s unclear what Murdoch may have in mind, and it’s likely that’s because he doesn’t know yet, either. But a media-savvy Media Nation reader has been feeding me stories suggesting that newspaper publishers — including Murdoch — may be inching toward an embrace with Microsoft, whose well-regarded search engine, Bing, has quickly established itself as the number-two competitor to Google.
Imagine some of the ways that this might work. Let’s start with the fact that all any Web publisher has to do is insert some code into its site in order to stop Google News from including it in its search results. No one dares do that, because Google drives lots of traffic to those sites. But publishers have long chafed at Google’s refusal to share any of its ad revenue with them.
But if you had to use Bing rather than Google in order to find content from a number of Big Media players, then you’d have to broaden your searches to two engines. Murdoch and his fellow media moguls might keep their sites open (smart) in return for Microsoft sharing the revenue it earns from selling ads tied to news content.
Or Microsoft might devise a more fine-tuned digital-rights-management system so that content-providers could offer a variety of open, closed and semi-open options (not so smart). There might even be a way for Google to include such content in its own searches as long as it didn’t upset Bing’s infrastructure.
At TechCrunch, Mike Butcher describes meetings that Microsoft is already having with European publishers. According to Butcher, Microsoft is prepared to invest nearly $170,000 in research and development. (I realize this sounds a bit like Lorne Michaels’ offering the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on “Saturday Night Live.”)
Jason Calacanis imagines Microsoft making a pitch that goes something like this:
Want to search the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and 3,894 other newspapers and magazine?
Well, then don’t go to Google because they don’t have them!
Go to Bing, home of quality content you can trust!
At Slate, Jack Shafer has more, with links from others hypothesizing what may be happening.
What’s clear is that Murdoch is going to try something dramatic, and that he’ll most likely have some major players on his side. What he’s saying right now may bear little resemblance to the strategy that ultimately emerges.
More: Poynter’s Rick Edmonds is thinking similar thoughts.
Earlier: Rupe prepares to take the plunge.
News executives love to rail against Google as a parasite that steals their content. Yet none dares to insert a simple piece of code that would make their sites invisible to Google’s search engine.
Until now. Rupert Murdoch, the biggest, baddest media mogul of them all, says he’s moving ahead with plans to start charging for content across the News Corp. mediascape. And he adds that when the moment arrives, he will indeed block Google from indexing his content.
Murdoch even goes so far as to say that he’ll eventually mount a legal challenge to the doctrine of fair use, which allows third parties to use small snippets of copyrighted material without permission for certain purposes, including education and criticism — and, in Google’s view, search indexing.
Publishers have long had a love-hate relationship with Google and Google News. On the one hand, Google News, for many people, has established itself as a substitute front page, making newspaper home pages all but irrelevant. On the other hand, many newspaper.coms receive much of their traffic from Google.
Now Murdoch has adjusted the equation to pure hate.
Two predictions:
First, he may enjoy some success in shoring up WSJ.com, by far his highest-quality outlet, which is already partly subscription-based. But if he thinks people will pay for online access to the sagging New York Post or even a successful operation like Fox News, then he’s going to learn a bitter lesson.
Second, by essentially killing his Web sites, he may well succeed in shoring up print circulation. That’s a short-term strategy, but it may be exactly what he’s got in mind.
Photo of Murdoch at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davis is (cc) by the World Economic Forum, and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
With apologies to Jeff Jarvis. Google’s YouTube is on track to lose $470 million this year, notes Boston Globe reporter Emily Sweeney on her blog. Why can’t the New York Times Co. find geniuses like that to run the Globe?
Since last summer, I’ve been using Google Reader as my RSS aggregator. It’s attractive, and I like the community features that it offers. Last night, though, I decided to switch back to NewsFire. Why?
So what have I given up? Mainly the ability to access my feeds from any computer. Since I’m rarely without my MacBook, that’s generally not a problem. Still, my thinking continues to evolve.
I’m trying to add Google Adsense, and I’ve made a mess of it — I’m approved (I think), but I never activated it (I guess) and now I can’t get into my account. The messages Google gives me are not helpful. Anyone know what I should do?
And, oh yeah — Merry Christmas!
I’ve asked my students in Reinventing the News to file brief reports on coffee shops on and near (and in some cases not so near) the Northeastern University campus so that we can compile them all into a Google Maps presentation. I figured it was only fair that I do it, too. So here is my report on Cappy’s II, a small, storefront-style eatery located at 309 Huntington Ave.
When you think of Cappy’s II, you think of pizza, subs and big salads. My only previous visit had been to pick up a Caesar salad to go. It was quite good. But I’d never thought about Cappy’s for my morning coffee run. It’s a bit too far up Huntington, and I’ve become accustomed to Au Bon Pain, which is closer to my office.
I arrived at Cappy’s at about 8:45 a.m. Before walking inside, I took some photos. That elicited a few suspicious questions when I approached the counter. But once I explained what I was doing, I was greeted in a friendly manner.
It was after the breakfast rush but long before lunch, so I had the place pretty much to myself. A medium coffee set me back a reasonable $1.50 plus tax. I asked for half-and-half, and my server, Eleni Athanasiou (in photo), added it for me before handing it to me. Though I prefer self-serve (it’s why I like Starbucks better than Dunkin’ Donuts, even though the coffee at Dunks is pretty good), she got the mix just about right.
Though Cappy’s mainly caters to the takeout crowd, there are some tables, including a few that are out of the way enough to enjoy a relaxing meal. It’s got a full breakfast menu, which would make it a pretty good spot for a morning meeting. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience.
Cappy’s II is open seven days from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.
One more reason to use Google: a religious-right activist says the godly should refuse to use it because the company opposes a proposed constitutional amendment in California that would ban same-sex marriage.
Good to see that Google is living up to its informal corporate motto — “Don’t Be Evil.”
Summer is the time for media experimentation, so I’m giving Google Reader a whirl as my RSS aggregator.
Aesthetically it’s a much nicer experience than NewsFire. But the disadvantage of a Web-based aggregator is that you don’t get to choose how frequently it scours the Web for new material. Stuff I put up a while ago still isn’t visible — which makes me wonder about my other subscriptions.
Anyone know how often Google Reader updates your feeds?
[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&s=AARTsJqk45NKetz9D5BTerMp52vrwyCpPA&msa=0&msid=110849334117410151532.00045173201c2c61999fb&ll=42.596565,-70.878296&spn=0.353826,0.583649&z=10&output=embed&w=425&h=350]
Among the more important skills that young journalists need to learn is how to incorporate mapping into a news presentation. The easiest way to do this is with Google Maps. I’ve put together a demonstration based on today’s Salem News, mapping the addresses where five stories took place.
This is far from the best application of mapping and journalism. I just wanted to see if I could get it to work. One glitch: Whenever I type in an address, I get a non-removable red marker. Since the Ipswich story is the last one I mapped, you’ll see a red marker partially hidden behind the blue marker. Anyone know how to get rid of that?
You’ll probably need to click on “View Larger Map” in order to see anything.
Update: Hmmm … the glitch seems to have magically disappeared.
