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[theweaselking]

Rupert Murdoch to Google: "Drop dead"
Google to Rupert Murdoch: Sure, whatever. We'll get *right* on that.

Comments

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

Obviously, this opinion is based on the fact that I've grown up with the internet (sort of), but if Murdoch thinks that a substantial percentage of his readers will pay for online content.... well, he's wrong.

I mean... okay, I pay a monthly subscription fee for City of Heroes. For that fee I get to play the game. NCSoft is the sole proprietor of the game. If I want to play it, I have to pay them.

News is not the same way. If I can't access Murdoch's online news without paying a subscription fee, I will just go somewhere else. There are dozens of mainstream news sites that are free.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that despite his business acument and his Scrooge McDuck-like quantity of cash, he doesn't seem to get how the Internet really applies to the average (much younger) user.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

"There's a doctrine called 'fair use', which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether," Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. "But we'll take that slowly."

FUUUUUUUCCCCKKK YOOUUUUUUUUUUU Murdoch.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

Strangely, that's exactly what's going through my head when I read that as well.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about the initial headline and story altogether. RM says that "we will try to stop Google indexing our content"? He will "explore ways to remove stories from Google's search indexes"?

Hello? It's a tiny little itty bit simple bit of code. I know it. Everyone knows it. Google ain't hard to dodge, they're ethical.

WTF is RM going on about?

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Well, he's got one of the basic authoritarian syndromes: he assumes that the way he'd act in Google's position (grasping, authoritarian, evil) is the only possible way that people can act in that position, and that the only reason that Google isn't acting that way is that they're trying to get him to let down his guard.

I wish I was joking.

This is also a general human tendency to some extent, because we're all prone to assuming that others think the way we do. It's a little more subtle when liberals do it, though, because it tends to take the form of assuming that people will be nice.

For the utterly pathological form, witness the way that US Congressional Dems treat the Republican delegation ... and the behavior they get in return.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

Never attribute to maliciousness that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

I believe that Murdoch's success at running a business empire makes stupidity an inadequate explanation (unless you're willing to stretch the definition of "stupid" to include "authoritarian," basically).

If you're talking about the Donks, well, then it's a toss-up.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

There are different levels of stupidity.

I do not doubt that Murdoch is gifted when it comes to running a business. However, like many (not all, but many) businessmen his age, he does not truly understand how the Internet functions. No, I'm not talking about his level of knowledge on how routing works or IPv4 vs. IPv6 or any of that.

I'm saying that he doesn't grasp how the general public views the Internet. If he wants to charge for basic news coverage, it's going to fail, because he offers nothing that cannot be found elsewhere for free. If he can offer some service that cannot be matched or found elsewhere, then yes, there is a point in charging for content. Otherwise....

Basically, he's stupid as regards how people view the Internet. He's not (yet) malicious about it. It's just that he has what amounts to a mental block in how he perceives it. (Much the same way that most of the U.S. Congress views the Internet - although they seem to think that it's solely a U.S. device that they alone can regulate.)

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, the problem was that I stretched the definition of "authoritarian" to include "stupid," then. Carry on.

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

*nod* Authoritarian isn't always stupid. Sometimes the boss needs to put his foot down and say "Damnit, we're doing it this way because I'm the boss and I said so."

Of course, when authoritarian is stupid, it's usually very stupid.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Idiot savant?

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Well, we can take it as a given that he's an idiot, but only because what he's doing is stupider than it is evil - normally Occam's Razor would imply that a genuinely wingéd and cloven hoofed individual such as Murdoch would be doing something eviller than it is stupid, simply because we'd have to assume that Murdoch was capable of being something other than evil.

Fortunately we can diagnose that what Murdoch is doing is stupid, and we can quite plainly see that he thinks what he's doing is evil, and so everyone is happy.

What you have to understand is that newspapers and websites make their money from Advertisers, always have, and always will. This is why most english newspapers of the 18th century were called the "[location] Advertiser" and were essentially a giant classifieds' section with some local news reporting added on for good measure because there wasn't really the sort of businesses in existence that could advertise in the way that would later come into vogue during the 19th century, and because newspapers were all local.

With that underpinning the business model on the financial side, newspapers have therefore spent the last 300 years trying to find new and better ways to increase their readership as much as possible, which led to the concept of national newspapers and then newspapers catering to certain niche demographics with specialised interests, in much the same way the modern porn industry does (see for instance the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal).

Murdoch thinks that what the internet has done is break the financial side of the business model by stealing away personal ads and readers, which in turns hurts advertisement revenue (which is partially true), AND THEREFORE, (here comes the intended evilness) the readership itself must pay its own way now! even though the yellow journalism murdoch has used to get the large readership and therefore large advertisment revenue that has made his fortune is explicitly based around the notion that the readership are slackjawed idiots with no sense of loyalty and who are quite happy to be fed cheap but cheerful, tasteless and inoffensive mush as long as it is in fact cheap enough, so... (and that's the stupid)

But never mind logic! As a Heroic Business Management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_medicine) scheme solves everything! Yes, it's a We Eat Our Own Poop Wholesale and Sell Our Poop Retail business scheme.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

This is the best LJ comment I've seen all day.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- robots.txt is so incredibly complex system and shiniest bit of nu-tech that hasn't existed...

...oh wait, since 1994.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something like "ah yes, the last gasps of old media as they nail their own coffins".

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

... and if you'd added "...shut from the inside" to the end of that I would've AOLOL.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

That would imply they could pry themselves out.

[phantoms-siren.livejournal.com]

So, wait, they own Sky News, the only known source of news that can even come close to the recordbreaking fail level of Fox News, and they want to stop anyone from reading it?

Clearly Rupert Murdoch is a humanitarian!

Don't you see? He's trying to save us all from misinformed, rabid, scaremongering bullshit. Now if only he could convince The Daily Mail and Fox to go the same way!

[anktastic.livejournal.com]

You, my good sir, are a genius. I shall too welcome the lack of BS!

[dscotton.livejournal.com]

He owns Fox News as well. I'm eagerly awaiting the day he goes through with his threats and lowers the readership of all his sites by 95%.

[ed-dirt.livejournal.com]

to Murdoch...see above.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I don't know what's going to be more funny: When he comes crawling back to them or his excuses when he does.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

exactly my thought.

Rupert Murdoch: Pull the plug. No more Google! Sweet!
Sky Employee: Sir, apparently nobody's reading our stories anymore.
Rupert Murdoch: Well no wonder they're not reading them? i just googled it and I can't find anything!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

You assume he even knows how to google anything.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Mr Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, told one of his own news channels, Sky News Australia, at the weekend, he is considering removing his newspapers’ content from Google’s search index when his company begins charging for content online.

*squints*

*squints at it sideways*

*squints at it sideways from the other side*

So let's see if I got this right. When his newspapers start charging for online content---and he can ask a couple of newspapers in Turkey how well that goes, especially when no one else does---he is also going to make sure no one is going to be able to find articles more or less randomly, or through a news portal.

...someone has not quite thought this through. On the good side, I hadn't had a chance to use this icon in a while.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

...someone has not quite thought this through.

See also "Murdoch".

He owns Fox, Sky, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Placing ideology so far above facts that you can't *see* there from here, and operating from the assumption that if you repeat a falsehood often enough it becomes true is a *main purpose* of *everything he owns*.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Dear Rupert Murdoch,

please please do remove your content from the Google search engine. And all the others. That way, not only will I *never* end up accidentally visiting one of your horrid little sites, I will know anyone that DOES read the nonsense you like to spew out will be doing so deliberately, actively, and paying for the privilege. I will then know not to listen to a single damned word they say, and avoid them generally as an obvious crazy person.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

Apparently he has a video on youtube about how google are evil and stealing from him, and are just parasites anyway.

On. Youtube.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Did he put it up or did someone else? Mr. Murdoch doesn't stirke me as the Youtube type, what with the multi-billion dollar media outlets and all...

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

Wait, I think I may have figured out what he's talking about (or something at least related). Do a search for a link that is blocked by some type of login feature. Now go back to Google's results and click the cached option. I just got into a story on the WSJ site that way, and I know there's a fairly ubiquitous IT problem site that you can circumvent your way into the same way.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Google won't index things you don't let them see.

A fair nbumber of "pay" sites let Google index (for free) parts of the site that are otherwise behind a paywall, because Google listings = hits = money.

But it's always *deliberate*: Google can't index something you don't give them access to.

Put another way: Either every person employed by the Wall Street Journal is an illiterate technically incompetent asshole (a possibliity which I will not dismiss out of hand), or someone deliberately let the Googlebot through the paywall.

Either way, this is not Google's problem.

[eididdy.livejournal.com]

I didn't think it was their problem, but I think Scrooge McDuck Murdoch said that they "were asleep" on it, so I'm inclined to go with the ITIA Theory.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

But it's always *deliberate*: Google can't index something you don't give them access to.

A quibble: that's won't index something you don't give them access to, because they are trying that Don't Be Evil thing and because at this point they're okay with letting you (effectively) remove your site from the Internet.