Murdoch v Google: it's war

Rupert Murdoch, the man with one of the most recognisable media names on the planet, has been making headlines online in recent days through his determination to make Google pay - for news content, that is.

On October 9, Murdoch announced it was time for internet search engines and other websites to start to pay for any news reports they currently took for free.

The owner of media giant NewsCorp said such sites would soon have to pay for any content taken from his firm's many news providers.

He was speaking at the World Media Summit in Beijing, where his comments were backed by some of his competitors.

Associated Press boss Tom Curley said news providers were being "exploited".

"We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves - at great human and economic cost - to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it," he said.

Murdoch has also continued agitating to try getting newspaper readers to pay for online content when they log-in.

The Wall Street Journal is exclusively pay-per-view, apart from a free online trial.

Not content with that battle, he decided that online search engines, particularly Google, should pay media organisations for creating the news generated by their reporters but shown for free on Google.

Newser founder Michael Woolff wrote on his www.newser.com blog, that Microsoft was a company Murdoch understood.

"When he talks about the technology business or about the internet or Google, on at least one occasion, I've heard him call Gadget, he invariable reverts to talking about Microsoft, which on at least one occasion I've heard him call IBM.

What is Microsoft going to do?"Murdoch still thinks Microsoft has all the answers, which it once did, and that it could do no wrong because it was so dominant, wrote Woolff.

Now, they might get together - Murdoch and Microsoft.

Murdoch's NewsCorp is furious that Google pays nothing for the content it skims from the publishing empire and Microsoft is fed up with seeing its own search engine service, relaunched earlier this year as Bing, so comprehensively outgunned.

Blogs around the world are now speculating Microsoft will pay NewsCorp for displaying its content on Bing, on the understanding that the publisher then prevents Google from linking to any of its work.

NewsCorp would get paid when its content appears on a search engine, while Microsoft could damage the quality of the search results produced by Google.

If internet users choose a search service on the basis of which one delivers the most comprehensive - but useful - results, Bing might get an edge.

Google continues to play down the move, but if NewsCorp can get this sort of deal, so can rival publishers.

The world's news organisations provide about 5% of the top results in a typical Google search.

Woolff says that depriving Google of that content would not be a killer blow, but it would make the internet search giant take notice.

The aim is not to get rid of Google altogether but to drive it to the negotiating table.

Google was also in the news for refusing to remove an image of United States first lady Michelle Obama.

The image, altered to look like a monkey, was no longer showing up under a Google image search at the time of writing.

The blog site that posted it, "Hot Girls", removed it and issued an apology in Chinese and English, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The photo stirred controversy when Google declined to remove it from the results page over free-speech concerns.

The apology, in shaky English, reads: "I am very sorry for this article, and that this is the program automatically issued a document from the article.

Do not the subject of race and politics make the discussion too radical and sincere hope that the world is very peaceful."

Most bloggers were in favour of Google not taking down the image, citing the freedom of the internet.

However, that did not stop Google a couple of years ago deciding to join with the Chinese Government and block some sites for Chinese internet users.