

Murdoch Says Web Aggregators Should Pay for Content  - bengebre
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aMA0yMciT0EQ

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teilo
Paul Carr has an article on this that, I think, nails what is going on with
Murdoch:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/rupert-murdoch-
google-n...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/28/rupert-murdoch-google-nsfw/)

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bengebre
It's not that I don't love newspapers or sympathize with their current plight,
it's just that Murdoch seems so fully disconnected from reality that he's
becoming dangerous. With all of his power and money he is perhaps dangerous
even to those beyond the reach of his media empire.

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henrikschroder
You don't get to his position by being disconnected from reality in any way.
This is simply about Rupert Murdoch wishing he could get money from news
aggregators, and using all his influence and clout to try and make it so.

If his company is the only content provider that will block the search
engines, he will lose big. However, if he can convince several other big
content providers that they all should block the search engines as well, he
gets more bargaining power towards the search engines and could eventually
make them pay up.

From Murdoch's point of view, he has nothing to lose on this. It doesn't cost
him anything to lash out like this, except making a lot of nerds like us
angry, but we're pretty insignificant. And if he succeeds, either by getting a
lot of content locked up behind payment walls, or by securing exclusivity
deals with certain search engines, he gains money. If he doesn't succeed, he
didn't lose anything, so trying it is a perfectly valid business decision.

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parka
Murdoch is basically saying he wants less reach and readers for his content.

