Can You Play Hardball With Google?
More on the Murdoch-Google posturing -- Michael Gray is not alone in the belief that media companies might be able to apply pressure to the search giant and pry open that bulging wallet with a bold play.
To me this strategy makes a lot more sense than a subscriber paywall plan -- get paid by the guy making money off your content, not the customer you've raised to expect free content. According to a recent Forrester study, 80 percent of consumers said they wouldn’t pay for access to online content if the publisher erects a pay wall.
In the past week there’s been a lot talk about the Wall Street Journal threatening to pull its content from Google and why it’s a good idea or sheer lunacy.
Let’s be clear. I think this entire thing is saber rattling on both sides and that Murdoch really just wants a “piece of the action.” I don’t think he wants the Wall Street Journal to be out of the index any more than Google is being flippant about whether they are in the index or not. However, if you are going to play hardball and draw a line in the sand, you have to be willing to hold your ground–or at least convince everyone you are–for it to work.... While it’s unlikely, if Bing was able to get a lot of the big newspapers to sign exclusively, Google’s index would take a measurable drop in quality, which could completely screw Google.
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