Google seems to be countering the threats from News Corp‘s Rupert Murdoch, and Microsoft’s Bing by evolution, rather than revolution. First of all there is the change to allowing five page views from a subscription site in 24 hours, rather than the previous “first click” principle (where the first click is free, you have to subscribe to the rest… unless you do a new search). Now, they’ve launched a revamped front page. Well, revamped by Google’s minimalist standards, anyway.

Many have commented that the five-clicks-rule is a response to Rupert Murdoch’s paywall posturing. I don’t really see it as such – for a start, Murdoch is like Bernie Ecclestone, and never publicly says what he actually wants, preferring to keep competitors and collaborators in the dark in order to get the best deal – the best deal for NewsCorp, that is.

Google’s change to the news system has likely been planned. It’s unlikely they took Murdoch’s comments at face value, as to truly erect the pay-per-view fences so seemingly beloved of late would require the news industry to work in step, with no dissenting voices. Even in the UK that will be nigh on impossible, with The Guardian having embraced openness to a dramatic degree.

The possible exclusive Bing-NewsCorp deal would be potentially suicidal for NewsCorp’s sites. The exclusive deal they did – ironically with Google – over the content of MySpace has come at a time when MySpace’s market share in the social networking space drop like the proverbial stone.

And if you’re still unclear what Murdoch really wants, well, MySpace does provide a vital clue. But like Bernie Ecclestone, it’ll be very difficult to second-guess what the deal’s going to be until Rupert signs on the dotted line… But whether or not he saw Google’s “response” coming, I’m pretty sure it’s something they’ve been working on for quite a while – and quite independently from Mr Murdoch…

Tags: Bing, Fox, Google, News, News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 00:00 and is filed under WWW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.