Murdoch: We Don't Need Google

I’ve decided that I really don’t need as many of you coming to Marketing Pilgrim each day.

In fact, I’ve decided to start charging for the content that we publish.

Oh, but I will still keep the advertisers’ money. They’ll just have to get used to the idea that we don’t have as many eyeballs viewing their ads.

And, lastly, I’m kicking out Google. Yeah, I don’t need it bringing any additional readers to the site. They just consume extra bandwidth.

Have I gone insane?

I haven’t – I’m not really doing any of the above – but media mogul Rupert Murdoch (NWS) quite possibly has!

Speaking in an interview with his own Sky News Australia channel, Murdoch – whom I can never look at without thinking of Spitting Image – bluntly explained how he might ban Google (GOOG) from indexing his newspapers’ content:

“I think we will [remove our websites from Google’s search index] but that’s when we start charging,” he said.

He added: "The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep."

I’m not going to bore you to death with obvious statements about the death of newspapers and web users expecting free content, so I’ll just let you make up your own mind as to whether Murdoch is a genius or not.

For those of you interested, you can watch the entire interview here, or below:

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Comments

[Julio:]

The poor man reminds me of former Senator Ted Stevens. I wonder if the persons advising him on technology are secretly shorting NWS stock?

Nov 10 11:38 AM

[sirhiggo:]

its honest conversation and he is expressing his views. I respect that more than companies who say one thing to keep up a public persona, and do the opposite.
Its going to be interesting to see what happens when news organizations start to charge. I don't think it will work, and I think it will move even more traffic to alternative news sites, but I dont know it. It will be interesting to see.

Nov 11 08:47 AM

[inversearch:]

Old Way: Old Media controls the news. New Way: News is out of control. Whether it's paid for or not, it's about what is believable, what is true.

Nov 11 09:05 AM