Murdoch to pull newspaper content from Google

Sara Kimberley, Media Asia, 12 November, 2009

Mumbai

News Corp chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch has said his company will remove its newspaper content from Google when it starts putting its titles' websites behind paywalls.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, Murdoch referred to Google, Microsoft and Ask.com as "content kleptomaniacs", and confirmed News Corp would take its newspaper websites off Google searches when it started charging for content.

The media mogul behind newspapers such as The Sun and The Times said having News Corp newspaper stories on Google might drive traffic to its websites, but there was little point in consumers visiting these sites if it was not earning his company significant revenues.

Murdoch said: "There is not enough advertising in the world to go around and make all the websites profitable."

He added: "We'd rather have fewer people come to the website and pay. Consumers shouldn't have had free news all the time - I think we've been asleep. It costs us a lot of money to put together good newspapers and good content. No news websites anywhere in the world are making large amounts of money."

Last week, Murdoch said the planned paywall for its newspaper websites would be delayed beyond an original planned June launch date.

News International's ad revenues fell 15 per cent year-on-year in Q3, although parent News Corp returned to profit growth in the quarter. Last month, Murdoch announced that readers who do not subscribe to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) would pay US$2 a week to access its mobile site, while those with subscriptions would pay $1 per week.