Of Google, Eloi and Murdochs....

Mr Murdoch is being lambasted today by the Chatterati Eloi(te)* of the technojournoblogosphere because he allegedly said that he would pull News International content off Google. Except, thats not quite what he said. What he said was, and I quote:

“I think we will [Pull it off Google], but that’s when we start charging....”

Context, as they say, is king - and that but was followed immediately - in the same phrase - with:

....We do it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get the first paragraph of any story but if you’re not a paying subscriber, you get a paragraph and a subscription form.”

So, I must be getting old, but what I didn't hear was "We will pull NI stufff off of Google" - which of course is what the headline writers grabbed and ran with. I heard something more nuanced (or I am possibly more naive), which was that they will start to control what one can view on a page far more, especially the "for money" ones and some may even not be directly visible from Google, one may have to visit the NI website. Reports companies like Gartner and Forrester already do this.

But separating a journo from a great speculative headline is harder than crowbarring a banker apart from a bonus, both for bloggers and mainstream it would seem..... (PaidContent seemed to be the only ones who picked up my impression)

Make your own mind up, its at about 3 minutes on the video above.

Update - a rather interesting argument by Marc Cuban:

First a little enlightenment for all of you that think Murdoch is making a mistake. This is not 1999, nor is it 2004, nor is it 2006, nor is it 2008. The calendar is about to turn to 2010. What worked and made sense 3,5 and 10 years ago, no longer does.

What has changed ? Quite a bit, but lets start with this. TWITTER IS SURPASSING GOOGLE as a destination for finding information on breaking and recent news of all types. Whats more, TWITTER POSSES NO THREAT to any destination news site. 140 characters does not a story make. Find it on twitter, link to a story on say, FoxNews and everyone is happy. The same concept applies to Facebook Links. Twitter and Facebook are not news destinations that can compete with traditional news sources. Google is. Rupert loves him some twitter. Google, not so much.

Not only are Twitter and Facebook becoming strong competitors for referrals to news sources from topical searches, they both have one HUGE HUGE HUGE advantage for news outlets that Google does not:

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not. In other words, if I trust a newspaper, tv or any brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me.

Interesting argument - I haven't seen any data on traffic splits so its hard to tell but one thing is for sure - Facebook, Twitter and similar will carry on growing.

*Heow an Arstraylieyan proneownces "Elite":D