Microsoft and News Corp eye web pact

Fascinating new development, as Microsoft and big media align themselves against Google.

[T]he Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached
other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from
Google’s search engine.

News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.

One
website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts
enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to
index with them”.

Microsoft’s interest is being interpreted as a
direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine
to start paying for content.

“This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan.

But
the biggest beneficiary of the tussle could be the newspaper industry,
which has yet to construct a reliable online business model that
adequately replaces declining print and advertising revenues. —Financial Times