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News Corporation, Bing and Google - An Internet Watershed

This is what they call a system of checks and balances. In the critical service area of Internet search, Google's enormous reach and power, as important as it is to business and consumer alike, needs a competitor to save it from its own self. And that competitor is Microsoft's Bing. Google, Bing and News Corporation are three powerful enterprises that have been in the news recently for their games of power-play that could have enormous effect on the way all of us get to use the Internet.

The problem has been simmering for years. News publishers the world over first greeted the Internet by putting their content online for free. And then blogs and smaller regional services started up that published their views and opinions online too. Pretty soon, news services began to see their revenue model go up in smoke before their very eyes. Newspapers and magazines have been closing every day for more than a year now, major newspapers included. News Corporation, the world's largest media conglomerate, has decided to take action then. They have contacted Google, and asked them to remove from their search listings any result that points to a News Corporation property. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and many other News Corporation publications are being removed from Google. If Google fails to comply, they can expect to be sued. First, Google didn't really pay any attention to this, so preposterous did the injunction sound. But the publication company has been moving ahead with this plan, collecting allies along the way - other news companies and search engines, and Google has been forced to concede.

But isn't this insanity? How would any publisher on the Internet actually get visitors if it weren't for Google? But one needs to understand the problem major news outlets face. News Corporation and all other news creators certainly invest a great deal in their newsgathering. They publish it on the Internet, and people read it for free. How on earth is a publisher to make a profit? News Corporation wonders the same. It feels that free news is a thing of the past; people are going to have to pay for it now. How feasible is this idea?

Google feels that News Corporation is being a little shortsighted. After all, Google brings 100,000 visitors to the company's websites every minute, something it considers more than adequate payment for Google's indexing. This doesn't really work in practice though; in the current recessive environment, click-through advertising income is sparse. With Bing in in its corner, News Corporation wishes to make all of its publications online, subscription-based. Google could figure that News Corporation really needs it better than it needs News Corporation. Google could just call their bluff, but it doesn't seem that simple. Bing is trying to step in and fill the void left behind by Google's departure. This could just be Bing's biggest oportunity.

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