Thought Microsoft was Turning Over a New Leaf? Think Again!

Though it has not yet happened, a plan first hinted of by Mark Cuban seems to be forming. Between his scheme and the machinations of Rupert Murdoch, to obtain every dollar, schilling, yen, and rupee on the planet, it seems as though the unlikely may become reality.

A report from Financial Times gives the details of the plan being hatched -

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company’s being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the 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.

In a possible sign of negotiations to come, Google last week played down the importance of newspaper content.

Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director, told a Society of Editors conference that Google did not need news content to survive. “Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue,” he said.

News Corp has been exploring online payment models for its newspapers and has taken an increasingly hard line against Google.

Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chairman, has said that he would use legal methods to prevent Google “stealing stories” published in his papers.

Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet.

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, has said that the company is prepared to spend heavily for many years to make Bing a serious rival to Google.

What are the chances that Microsoft will take its eye off its core business and lose big because of the plans of Darth Ballmer? It was just a few days ago he was presenting himself as a changed person, newly humbled, and willing to concentrate on operating systems as his main purpose in life. How quickly that ruse has been dropped.

Microsoft has sought to differentiate Bing by drawing in material not found elsewhere, though has not demanded exclusivity from content partners. Bing accounted for 9.9 per cent of searches in the US in October, up from 8.4 per cent at its launch, according to ComScore.

Several places have reported that the Bing improvements are coming at a cost to Yahoo, which may have been part of the master plan.

As for providing content not found elsewhere, I suppose causing content duplicated elsewhere to disappear qualifies as providing unique content.

James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp Europe and Asia, hinted last week that the company was making progress with its online plans. “We think that there’s a very exciting marketplace, potentially a wholesale market place for digital journalism that we’ll be developing,” he said.

What if Microsoft and Murdoch held a party and no one came? How great would that be?

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UPDATE: Since the time I wrote this, everyone has done some fact checking, and it seems that it is going to happen.

Larry Dignan from ZDNet has given some insight.

Another version of the story has appeared on Maximum PC, with a picture of Ballmer in a moment of dubious triumph. Not the pic below – I happen to think it is appropriate, however.

the only thing worse would be to find that she is a part of the plan…

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