Microsoft search deal with News Corp cools

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 2 Dec 2009 at 10:33

Reports that Microsoft would pay News Corp to delist its sites from Google have been overplayed, according to reports.

Rumours had surfaced that Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp, was considering removing the company's news from Google's search results, and was talking to Microsoft about listing the stories with its Bing search engine instead.

However doubts have now been cast on the deal. "While the companies have a common interest, the economics do not seem to be there for the common arrangement initially rumored to be under discussion," claims a source close to the situation.

In a conference on the future of journalism in the internet age, Murdoch claimed the Wall Street Journal had one million paying subscribers, and that News Corp intended to expand the subscription model to all of the company's papers.

He did not mention the discussions with Microsoft in his prepared remarks and declined to take questions after his speech. Representatives for News Corp could not be immediately reached and Microsoft declined to comment on this story.

Google claims it provides news organisations with around 100,000 clicks a minute. It refuses to pay to index news content on the grounds that copyright law permits indexing as a part of fair use.

The reports comes as Google announces plans to limit the number of free stories people can read through its News service.