Murdoch makes waves. Microsoft provides paddle. Google sails into the sunset!

(From George Parker at Madscam)

With all the talk and media hype about the Wizened of Oz (Rupert Murdoch) deciding to put Google out of business and throw in his lot with the Borg of Bing (Microsoft), particularly as rumors abound that MS will pay the Dirty Digger dumpster loads of cash to block Google from indexing his news sites, you have to wonder how many pundits have actually thought this scenario through.

For a start, newspapers continue to demonstrate they have piss poor understanding of how Google works or of the many options they have for dealing with the 800 pound search gorilla. One of these is the “First Click Free” program, which allows them to have both a paywall and the traffic sent by Google.

As Google News exec Josh Cohen explains how it works: “If a publisher understands that quality, original content does best and therefore tries to create more, great. But there is still a lot of discussions taking place such as… ‘I have to make this content free or Google won’t index it,’ and that’s not the case. “First Click Free is only one example of the ways that publishers can make subscription content available. They can do previews, they can block it in different ways. I think there are a lot of those questions about the nuts and bolts of how you can work with us, subscriptions just being one of them.”

The funniest bit is that none of this addresses the “leaky back door” issue, whereby smart arsed users, like me, know all you have to do is copy the headline and paste it into Google Search and get the entire article placed behind the paywall for free.

Personally, I don’t think any of this *** will take place. It’s just a giant smokescreen from Murdoch, who has been known to do this kind of thing in the past. Threatening the search giant with the software giant to encourage some kind of financial deal, might just put a bigger smile on Wendy’s face when the Diggers will is finally read!

http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/madscam/archive/2009/11/26/murdoch-makes-waves-microsoft-provides-paddle-google-sails-into-the-sunset.aspx