News Corp. is considering blocking Googles search engine from displaying its news articles and is talking to Microsoft Corp. about displaying stories on its Bing site, people familiar with the situation said yesterday.
MediaNews Group Inc., the Posts publisher, will block Google News when it starts charging readers in Pennsylvania and California for online content next year, Chief Executive Officer Dean Singleton said in an interview. Morning News owner A.H. Belo Corp. may also introduce online subscription fees and also block Google, Executive Vice President James Moroney said.
“The things that go behind pay walls, we will not let Google search to, but the things that are outside the pay wall we probably will, because we want the traffic,” Singleton said.
Newspaper publishers, grappling with a collapse in the print-ad market, are considering Web-site charges and are pushing back against Google, which displays headlines and excerpts from stories on its free news site. News Corp., whose Wall Street Journal already charges for online subscriptions, has also said that it plans more paid-for content.
While newspapers have complained about Google using their news to attract users and boost revenue, fewer than 1 percent have opted out of the service, Josh Cohen, head of Googles news division, said in an interview.
Value in Traffic
“Theres value in that traffic and I think publishers recognize that value,” Cohen said. “The reason theyre not opting out is theyre getting something from that relationship.”
Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in an interview this month that his company, owner of the most popular Internet search engine, would like to keep news providers on its site.
“We do worry about it, and we think it would be a bad outcome” for newspapers to leave Google, Schmidt said. “We would encourage them to stay in our program.”
Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman, declined to comment yesterday on any talks between News Corp. and Microsoft, as well as the other newspapers potentially opting out of Google News.
Murdoch, News Corp.s chairman and CEO, said in an interview on Sky News Australia this month that he may remove the companys content from Google searches. The companys newspapers include the Times of London and the New York Post.
Paid Models
A.H. Belo, based in Dallas, hasnt decided if it will block Google News and any action isnt “imminent,” said Moroney, who is also publisher of the Morning News. Blocking Google would be part of a larger strategy, he said.
A.H. Belo is considering models for charging for some of its Web content and plans to implement a pay wall within six months at either the Morning News, Rhode Islands Providence Journal or Riverside Press-Enterprise, published in Riverside, California, Moroney said. That may require Web readers to go directly to the newspapers site to read stories, he said.
“This is traffic thats not being monetized to any great degree,” Moroney said. “Its akin to a person who drops into town, buys one copy of your newspaper and leaves town again and yet you spend a whole bunch of time building your business around that type of customer.”
Google, based in Mountain View, California, rose $12.39 to $582.35 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday. A.H. Belo gained 2 cents to $4.40 on the New York Stock Exchange. MediaNews is closely held.
Google Criticisms
Google News gathers stories from the Web and displays their headlines, photos and the first few lines with links to the full articles on the original publishers Web sites.