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Even With Microsoft Pact, Murdoch Needs Allies

Rupert Murdoch is currently in talks with Microsoft about a pact in which News Corp. would de-index its news sites' content from Google, and make them visible to much smaller search competitor Bing, owned by Microsoft. In exchange, Microsoft would pay News Corp. some unknown amount of money.

The deal would let Murdoch finally strike a blow at Google, and the small amount of ad revenue he loses from reduced traffic would probably be covered by the fees paid by Microsoft. For Microsoft, such a deal would represent a huge upgrade over the thin offerings currently featured on Bing's news channel.

But success for News Corp. depends on whether Murdoch can persuade other publishers to emulate him, even though the benefits of doing so are far from self-evident. While Murdoch is exhorting everyone to join him in deploring "parasites," such as Google, his digital chief, Jon Miller, is trying to organize a consortium of news organizations committed to charging for their content. It appears that News Corp. is resigned to the fact that to really go up against Google, it can't go it alone.

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