Murdoch, Microsoft gang up against Google

One wouldn't normally class either NewsCorp or Microsoft as Davids in a battle against a Goliath. Yet that would be a fitting description for both in the context of their respective campaigns against Google. Might, then, an alliance give the pair a chance to take on the search giant?

NewsCorp is furious that Google pays it not a dime for the content it skims from its global publishing empire, while Microsoft is fed up with seeing its own search engine service, relaunched earlier this year as Bing, so comprehensively outgunned. But what if Microsoft were to pay NewsCorp for displaying its content on Bing, on the understanding that the publisher then prevents Google from linking to any of its work?

It could be a win-win. NewsCorp finally starts getting paid when its content appears on a search engine, while Microsoft damages the quality of the search results produced by Google. Assuming internet users choose a search service on the basis of which one delivers the most comprehensive n but useful n results, Bing would get an edge.

This is not a perfect solution. We don't know how much Microsoft would pay NewsCorp for dumping Google, but it's going to have to be a fat cheque to compensate for all the traffic NewsCorp's sites currently get from the latter but would stand to lose. Google's lead over Bing is so marked that advertisers currently paying NewsCorp for online readers would want to see lower rates.

As for Bing, NewsCorp content is a drop in the ocean of all that is available online n many Google users will not even notice it has gone. And if Bing were to promote NewsCorp content more aggressively than search results for which it has not paid n which may be part of the deal n it could find the integrity of its own product questioned.

Still, an alliance with Microsoft is the first sign that all NewsCorp's talk of moving to a pay-model for online publishing has a credible business model underlying it, though allowing free access to content on Bing would presumably undermine its own efforts to charge readers.

Moreover, if NewsCorp can do this sort of deal, so can rival publishers. The world's news organisations produce around 5 per cent of the top results in a typical Google search. Depriving Google of that content would not be a killer blow, but it would be a nip at the heels that the elephant would notice.

As the endgame for NewsCorp n and most other news publishers n is not to get rid of Google altogether but to drive it to the negotiating table, a nip is what needs administering. Bing might in time find itself forced to play second fiddle to Google once again, but in the short term, Microsoft's search engine could be a vital weapon for online publishers.