News Corp and Microsoft: there’s a combination to strike fear into geeks’ hearts

For years, the World Wide Web has been a glorious state of chaos where stealing and cheating have been tolerated in a cauldron of experimentation and flights of fancy. Now, da-dum, enter the suits. Microsoft has been in early discussions with News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, about a pact to pay News Corporation to remove links to its news content from Google’s search engine and display them exclusively on Bing,  the Microsoft equivalent, The New York Times reports.  The NYT report follows one in The Wall Street Journal, which follows a Financial Times report. The reason for all of this reporting on reports is that the talks are, reportedly, “at an early stage”. In other words, the parties are flying kites with selective leaks to try to gauge the public horror at such a horrendous act of corporate manoeuvring so contrary to the  so-called “spirit of web”. It might also be stupid business. A deal on a large scale would create a new set of barriers for users to navigate and would represent an enormous risk for News Corporation, or any news site, NYT reports. More than 65% of all search inquiries in the US are made on Google, and removing links from there would lead to a big drop in traffic. Bing handles 9.9% of domestic searches, according to comScore. Read more:  New York Times