• Google Buzz

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) News, Topix and other news search services have replaced the morning newspaper for many consumers, but one titan in the media industry won’t have any of it. Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, recently commented to one its news channels that he might remove News Corp. paper’s content from Google’s index in hopes of promoting the notion of paying for content online.

Murdoch has been much more vocal than other media executives in his negative views of Google and its effect on the industry. Murdoch said that News Corp. newspapers which include The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires could be removed from Google’s index all together, but commented that the company would have to implement a pay-wall when the move happens.

“I think we will [remove our websites from Google’s search index] but that’s when we start charging,” Murdoch said. He continued, “The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”

Although Murdoch has been making a lot of press about implementing a subscription model on his content sites, consumers wanting free access to information may have won a small victory. News Corp. was originally planning on making all of its newspaper sites on a subscription model by next June, but it now seems that those plans have been delayed.

During a conference Call to News Corp. investors to discuss financial results, he told his investors that he couldn’t promise to meet his self-imposed deadline, but commented that it was a work in progress and that the company was working “very hard” to deliver a subscription solution.

Currently one of Murdoch’s publications, the Wall Street Journal, has a partial paywall in place. Web users without a subscription can only read the first paragraph on an article if they don’t have a subscription, however consumers can get around that block by visiting an article from a link posted on Google News.

Many advocates of free and open information have decried Murdoch’s position as out of touch with his readers, contending that web-users would rather view free, ad-supported content, than paying a monthly subscription.



 Related Content: