Microsoft and News Corp. discuss Google removal: FT

The talks are at an early stage, the newspaper reported on its Web site Sunday. News Corp. is one of several online publishers Microsoft has approached to remove their Web sites from Google, according to the newspaper.

The move indicates a “direct assault” on Google because it may pressure the owner of the Internet search engine to pay for content, according to the FT. News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch, who heads the European and Asian operations, have said they plan to charge for online content.

Google doesn't comment on speculation, the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement Monday.

“We believe search engines are of real benefit to newspapers,” the statement said. “Google has a clear policy of respecting the wishes of content owners.”

Amelia Agrawal, a Singapore-based spokeswoman at Microsoft, couldn't immediately comment. Jannie Poon, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman at News Corp., declined to comment.

“The key step in developing a key wholesale marketplace for digital journalism is starting to ask a price,” James Murdoch said Nov. 19 at a Morgan Stanley conference in Barcelona. “We invest quite a lot in our journalism and we are proud of it and we think we should charge a fair price for it.”

Newspapers have been seeking new sources of revenue to counter the loss of advertising and paying readers to the Internet. U.S. newspaper industry ad revenue fell 28 percent in the third quarter to US$6.44 billion, according to estimates by the Newspaper Association of America last week.

The Wall Street Journal in October began charging for access on mobile devices such as Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and announced plans for a higher-priced WSJ Professional Web site.

James Harding, the editor of News Corp.'s UK Times newspaper, said last week that the publication plans to charge for digital content from next spring.

Microsoft and Yahoo! Inc. in July announced a search- engine partnership that is meant to provide a bigger competitor to Google in the search market. Under the agreement, Yahoo would put Microsoft's new Bing search engine on its Web sites and split the related advertising revenue.

Google's share of the U.S. search market climbed to 65.4 percent last month from 64.9 percent in September, according to ComScore, a Reston, Virginia-based research firm. Microsoft rose to 9.9 percent from 9.4 percent, while Yahoo fell to 18 percent from 18.8 percent.

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