Let me summarize some of the news around News Corp, Google and Microsoft Bing over the past couple weeks. Rupert Murdoch of News Corp is upset that Google indexes his news sites content without paying a fee for doing so. Google tells Murdoch, if you don't want in our index and the traffic that it sends to you, just tell us in your robots.txt file and we won't index you. Murdoch then says, he may just do that if Google does pay up.
You see this game?
Now, Microsoft comes in and talks a deal with News Corp to pay for indexing their content, if they de-list themselves from Google. Got it?
Honestly, I don't think there is anyone better to comment on this type of topic then Danny Sullivan. He has years of real newspaper experience and knows search like no one else. He wrote a piece named Thoughts On A "Killer" Bing-News Corp Deal & The Myth Of An "OPEC For News".
I was browsing a WebmasterWorld thread and it seems like there are very strong opinions on both sides. Let me quote a few:
I guess MS has decided that if you can't beat 'em, (try to) sabotage 'em!
Google is so engraved in society today that building a better search engine(not saying Bing is) would not beat Google. Drastic measures are the only way to compete with Google.
It is a PRIVILEGE for a search engine to list a (good) website and Google has been taking it for granted for too long..
Anyway we all loose big time if there ever is a search engine war where sites decide to be listed in one search engine and not in another one.
I think all the perspective has been said already, so I will just end here.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
