Murdoch-Microsoft Deal In the Works 468
Hugh Pickens writes "The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is in discussions to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, to 'de-index' its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search, and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet. Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content. 'This is all about Microsoft hurting Google's margins,' said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan. 'It's easy to believe that [Microsoft] may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google,' writes Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. 'Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either; he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.'"
This Really Simplifies My Life! (Score:5, Funny)
Murdoch-Microsoft Deal In the Works
Thank you! Finally some good news. These hatred consolidation programs cut my insane ranting down significantly and gives me more time to appreciate the finer things in life like making intricate tinfoil feathers to put into my tinfoil pimp hats. I applaud Murdoch & Ballmer for finally thinking of people like me. But it may be too little too late, ever since the government subsidized hatred and what with the sub-prime hatred rate financial crisis, I've been forced to cut down on hating as much as forty or fifty percent. Tough times we live in. Tough times.
Evil genius (Score:4, Funny)
'Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either: he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.'
Which is just as well because I've never heard anyone accuse Murdoch of being more than half way towards being an evil genius.
Wait! Does it mean, Myspace will be deindexed? (Score:5, Funny)
[I! Love! This! Company!] YEEEEAAAAAH!
Shooting what? (Score:5, Funny)
"Rupert Murdoch is pointing a gun to Google's head, and Microsoft is helping him pull back the trigger."
Oh old Rupert, is it really Google's head, or did you write G O O G L E on your toes? (Yeah that's right, Rupert Murdoch has 6 toes on each foot, you heard it here first!)
I as an australian apologise for this man (Score:4, Funny)
This man who turned journalists into the story factories they now are.
"Never let the facts get in the way of a good story" - I'm sure that this was a Murdoch quote.
Has obviously decided he is sorry for the hurt he has caused and now wishes to remove all the crap fiction that is vomited out of news corp from the poor (emphasis on poor ) innocent internet users.
I for one want to say thank you Rupert Murdoch.
If you are defined by your enemies... (Score:4, Funny)
...this is prima facie evidence that Google's "Don't be evil" policy is working very, very well.
Re:Bing vs Google (Score:3, Funny)
Re:say and do (Score:2, Funny)
see Murdochs contribution to the culture (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Let me get this right (Score:2, Funny)
Wait, Fox was in the news business?
Exclusivity contracts come to search engines (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now, maybe. (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, maybe not. But I was just carrying things to their obvious conclusion. And Boing-Boing seems to agree. Look at the photo of Ballmer and Murdoch [boingboing.net] and see the evil. The photo file is named Balldock and Mumer. (Should have been Balldoch and Murmer.)
Re:Evil genius (Score:3, Funny)
The thing is that the anti-Microsoft people sometimes get carried away and accuse MS of all sorts of evil that they haven't necessarily committed, so others sometimes correct them. Nobody does this with Murdoch's media empire because there isn't any sort of evil they haven't committed.
Re:Bing vs Google (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bing vs Google (Score:1, Funny)
That's funny. I'm the type of person that *looks* for alternative sources like FOX, CBN, al-Jezeera, Russia Today...
Heh.
If I wanted opinions that were not based on reality, I would ask all my questions on the christian news sites.
Re:If anyone can see it, it can be indexed (Score:2, Funny)
Experts!
Re:Let me get this right (Score:1, Funny)
Fox wants to pull out of the news business? And we're supposed to complain?
I don't thinks this means what he thinks it means.
Fox is in the news business? I thought they were political pundits?
Re:Shooting what? (Score:5, Funny)
It's actually a reminder to himself for when he's naked. "Go Ogle."
Re:Bing vs Google (Score:5, Funny)
It's not odd if you don't have time to sort through sources that have a strong history of bias and agenda.
Fox News we can leave as an exercise for the reader. CNBC consists of one constant rant against Obama (Kudlow, Cabrera, guests, etc.)
But CBN? Pat Robertson as a news source? You can't be serious.
Re:If anyone can see it, it can be indexed (Score:5, Funny)
But I'm grateful to experts exchange for at least one laugh. Hint: the hyphen in their domain name appeared some relatively long time after site launched.
Re:If anyone can see it, it can be indexed (Score:1, Funny)
Well there's StackOverflow now, making Ex-spurt-sex-change wholly redundant.
Re:Bing vs Google (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If anyone can see it, it can be indexed (Score:3, Funny)
The first one hides links to Expert Sexchange from your Google search results (unfortunately, it still shows the text, it just hides the link. Someone with better CSS-fu than me can probably tell you how to hide the entire li. The second line puts a big red [IDIOT WARNING] after any link to Expert Sexchange that you might come across by accident. I have a few of these that stop me accidentally visiting sites like MySpace, Information Week, or Roughly Drafted.
I also add a line like this for sites with irritating ads, to prevent me from accidentally visiting them again. I prefer this to ad blocking; if the ads are too irritating for me to want to the site, I'd rather just not visit them.
Re:My enemies' frenemy is my frenemy (Score:1, Funny)
> The difference is that the Daily Show and Colbert Report are both more
> entertaining are more accurate...
I.e., more in line with your politics.
He didn't say either the Daily Show or the Colbert Report were particularly accurate in an absolute sense, just that they were more accurate than Fox News. That's like saying a mouse is bigger than a common earthworm, it doesn't imply that neither are large creatures on an absolute scale.
Re:Rupert's right (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, I think he's a greedy jack***
Normally I'm against this sort of self-censorship, but I agree that "Thompson" [wikipedia.org] is an incredibly vulgar word nobody here wants to hear!
At first I thought you meant "jackass" but there's nothing vulgar about donkeys.
I will just rely on the news I can get for free (Score:4, Funny)
You can still get plenty of news for free on the Internet!
Did you know that George Bush parachuted out of the airplanes just before they hit the WTC? I would not know that except for reading the free news. Also did you know that Al Gore is using global warming as a smokescreen to hide the thermal exhaust from his secret base under the ice cap from which he will enslave the world?