Microsoft Paying Sites to De-list From Google?

By Jane McEntegart
published

Microsoft has reportedly asked News Corp to make good on its threat to de-list itself from Google and is offering the company an incentive to do so.

A couple of weeks back News Corp's Rupert Murdoch said he was considering blocking Google from indexing his news sites as part of the company's plans to push a pay-for-content business model. Now a report in the Financial Times claims that Microsoft is willing to pay Murdoch to do just that.

The FT yesterday reported that Microsoft had entered discussions that would involve the News Corp being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google. Microsoft is also said to have approached other publishers.

Neither Microsoft nor News Corp have commented on the report, which was published yesterday. But, if there's any grain of truth to the rumors and a deal like this comes to fruition, it will be a big advantage over Google for Bing and Microsoft.

If news publishers de-listed their content from Google but that same content was available on Bing, would you switch search engines? Let us know in the comments below!

Jane McEntegart
98 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Microsoft and Intel have got to be a couple of the most corrupt companies out there.

    Whatever happened to anti-competitive laws?
    Reply
  • maydaynomore
    Already switched. Loving Bing. Used Google for about 10yrs. (still using Gmail) Google is great, but, for me, Bing is more user friendly.
    Reply
  • lvlouro
    Question nº1 how can this be legal in any way???
    Reply
  • ltgrunt
    Not having to deal with News Corp.'s tastelessly one-sided smears and propaganda is a significantly good reason to never ever leave Google.
    Reply
  • Why can't Microsoft play fair and square?
    Reply
  • sstym
    If news publisher content was available for free on another search engine, I might have to switch to that engine because the internet is my primary news source. I wouldn't be too happy about it (not because I like Google, I just don't like the principle of paying for news), and if other reliable news sources were still available on my primary search engine, I might switch to another news source instead.

    On the other hand, we're talking about News Corp here, not real news. Still, it's probably the harbinger of a new trend.
    Reply
  • danhitchcock
    I like how the richest software giant is terrified and trying to compete with a company which provides only free software.
    Reply
  • Doesn't this fall under the same business practices that Intel was employing against AMD? It seems pretty similar if it doesn't fall in that category.
    Reply
  • hixbot
    Give it up MS, Bing is a failure.
    Reply
  • ADM-86
    No,because in seconds there would be a free site in Google with the same news and info or a pirate site with the original ones.

    Btw Rupert Murdoch is an idiot that is gonna get a hard lesson on how everything works right now,because if he thinks he can force the Internet users to pay for information that we can get free in other places....well that just stupid from a business point of view.(he's too old and too stubborn to be making this kind of decisions)
    Reply