Murdoch, ‘would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak’
p2pnet news view P2P:- “Individual newspapers can’t live with Google, but they can’t live without it either …”
The statement comes toward the end of Nick Carr’s (right) Murdoch’s wink in his Rough Type bog.
Rupert Murdoch reckons net content is worth money, as he told Skye News.
Now, “When it comes to Google and other aggregators, newspapers face a sort of prisoners’ dilemma,” says Carr, going on, “If one of them escapes, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. But if all of them stay, none of them will ever get enough traffic to make sufficient money. So they all stay in the prison, occasionally yelling insults at their jailer through the bars on the door.”
But, he observes, “Of course, there has always been a way to break out of the prison: If a critical mass of newspapers were to opt out of Google’s search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Newspapers are struggling, but they remain, by far, the world’s dominant producers of hard news. That gives them, as a group, a great deal of leverage over companies like Google who depend on a steady stream of good, fresh online content. Google needs newspapers at least as much as newspapers need Google – a fact that’s been largely hidden up to now.”
What Murdoch “effectively did in his interview with Sky News was to send a signal to other newspaper companies: We’ll opt out if you’ll opt out,” says the post, going on »»»
Murdoch positioned himself as the would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak, without actually risking a jailbreak himself.
There are signs that the signal is working. Bloomberg reports today that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are now considering blocking Google in one way or another. More ominously (if you’re Google), Microsoft has apparently responded to the signal by offering to pay News Corp to make Bing the exclusive search engine for its content. Microsoft doesn’t have a lot of weapons to use against Google in the search business, but getting prominent news organizations to block Google would be a very powerful weapon. (Steve Ballmer would be more than happy to reduce the basic profitability of the search business, as that would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft.)
Faced with a large-scale loss of professional news stories from its search engine, Google would likely have little choice but to begin paying sites to index their content. That would be a nightmare scenario for Google – and a dream come true for newspapers and other big content producers.
“The idea that newspapers might come together to pursue a radical and risky strategy seems far-fetched,” says Carr, adding:
“Then again, maybe the time has finally come for newspapers to take a deep collective breath and apply the leverage they still hold. They don’t have a whole lot left to lose.”
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(If you don`t fancy online payments, please email me at p2pnet @ shaw dot ca and I`ll send you my snail-mail address.)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
told Skye News – Time to pay for the net: Rupert Murdoch, November 10, 2009
Rough Type – Murdoch’s wink, November 24, 2009
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November 27th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
yeah it took them this long to figure it out. haha , whatever i could have told ya ages ago- . http://www.emule-project.com
November 27th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
“Google needs newspapers at least as much as newspapers need Google â a fact thatâs been largely hidden up to now.”
O RLY? Newspapers have a monopoly on hard news?
November 27th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Those whom would pay to join the Microsoft idea are not credible sources of news anyhow. It would be nice to keep their often misinformed information off of the web, despite that violating net neutrality. Looks like they want to do it to themselves.
November 27th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Jon, you also believe your “content” or “product” is worth money and have recently threatened to close down p2pnet if people don’t start paying up. Yet you have never paid anyone who has written articles for you which had helped you earn your salary from your former anonymous benefactor.
Are you a hypocrite? Yes you are. Please respond intelligently.
November 27th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
@ RW above:
Did you see my post that I might have to close p2pnet down as a threat? That suggests it means something to you.
I get up at 3:00 every morning, answer emails and stuff until around 4:00, and then post until around noon. Then I spend another hour or so working offline. And I often log back on again for an hour or two in the later afternoon. Just like now. Not only but also, I now work on a2f2a.com. Every day. For free. And I make and receive phone calls related to both sites. And I’m a husband and home-schooling father. I used to be an amateur musician as well, but I don’t have time for that any more.
This isn’t about content, or how much it is or isn’t worth. I’m not demanding payment. I honestly believe I’m providing something that’s needed and I’m asking for help to keep on doing that,
I posted ‘p2pnet: close to collapse’ seven days ago. How much as come in? $376.03, after PayPal has deducted its fee. So if I say (very conservatively) I worked for 8 hours a day for six days, that’s about $7.80 an hour. But please don’t think I’m belittling that. I’m not.
And I haven’t mentioned the lawsuits. One was entirely pro bono, and one wasn’t, and it cost me a lot of money I had to borrow and still haven’t paid back. It would have been more had it not been for the $2,000 readers donated. And we’ve contributed our own savings over the years. So now we don’t have savings.
I thought I’d had it when I made that first post, but with Cliff on board, and a lot of thinking, my wife and I believe we may have a way to keep going until the end of March. That’ll give me breathing space, and thanks to Rogan, we’ll also be re-jigging the site which will, I think, make a big difference.
As for paying contributors, I’d love to and now I have someone to work with – Cliff – it’s possible a project I’ve had in mind for five years might be fired up. If it does and it works, it’ll be an earner and I’ll not not only be able to pay contributors, I’ll be able to hire a writer, and maybe two.
Cheers!
November 27th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
If newspapers attempt to charge for information, the only thing that’s going to happen is people will turn to blogs and other free sources of news. No one has a monopoloy on world events. People will find out, one way or another, and one of the benefits of a worldwide communication system (ie, the Internet) is that no one has to pay to collect information anymore, save their ISP.
November 29th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Surely another meta search engine like Copernic would index articles from both Google and Bing. It’s impossible to make news exclusive to one search engine…