Microsoft, News Corp And Google: Is Paying Newspapers A New Weapon In The Search Engine Wars?

Image via CrunchBase

Rory-Cellan Jones at the BBC reports on this morning's Financial Times article outlining talks between Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the alleged substance of which is to work out a deal where Microsoft will pay News Corp newspapers in exchange for those papers de-indexing from Google.  The benefit would presumably fall to Bing, Microsoft's search engine and distant competitor to Google.

The [FT] piece says that Microsoft has been in talks with the media giant News Corporation over a plan which could see the firm behind papers from the Wall Street Journal to the Sun being paid to stop Google searching its news websites.

The implication is that Microsoft's search engine Bing would be the place to go for news - and that Google would have to start paying if it wanted to retain that kind of content.

The FT's story comes a week or so after the Techcrunch UK blog reported that Microsoft had held talks with European publishers about what sounds like a similar plan to get them onside as part of a battle to make Bing a more attractive and lucrative place than Google for their content.

So is there any truth in either report? Well, a couple of days after the Techcrunch post, I was due to interview a senior executive from Bing, and Microsoft called to ask whether I would be asking about that story. When I said yes I would, they said he could not talk about it - and we therefore pulled out of the interview. Make of that what you will.

Is this the end of search engine neutrality?  If Bing pays for exclusive content, what does that do to the perceived value of its index?  And what is the price for the newspaper content? Stay tuned.