• Forbes, Monday, April 6, 2009 12:04 PM

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch is urging media companies to fight back against Google, despite the fact that the search giant sends more than 300 million clicks a month to newspaper sites. "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?" Murdoch asked at an industry conference in Washington, D.C., last week. The answer, he said, should be, "Thanks, but no thanks."

For its part, Google says its practices are in "full compliance" with copyright laws. In a statement, the Web giant defended Google News in particular. "We show just enough information to make the user want to read a full story -- the headlines, a line or two of text and links to the story's Web site. That's it." Forbes writer Dirk Smillie says "Murdoch's anger is understandable," as sites like Google aggregate and organize content in a manner they see fit, and then sell advertising against it.

Recently, Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson said, "Google devalues everything it touches. It divides content quantitatively rather than qualitatively." Of course, the relationship between Google and content owners is more complex than that, says Smillie, as The Wall Street Journal and other publishers rely on Google to send them a good chunk of their traffic. "Google is not at fault," says Gregory Rutchik, chairman of Beverly Hills, Caif.-based The Arts and Technology Law Group, but he thinks that Murdoch's comments may be a precursor to a lawsuit. "Murdoch wants to...bring Google to the bargaining table" to figure out to be paid for his newspaper assets.

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