Sorry, but this does not mean a thing to anyone except Murdoch. Without Google driving traffic to his site, no one knows what is on his site or that they even exist. Almost ANY story they might have read on his websites will be available on ANY other website. He can retain and charge the business readers but so what. He is doing that now.

Murdoch's brand of news is mostly fantasy anyway.

What is strange is that people assume that because something was "for free" there is no costs and that all will remain the same. But it is not! After free television, pay Tv came and with that revenues. On the web, now that enough people are connected it is time to monetize.
If for a reader all news are the same, that means that also all movies are the same, all songs are the same, all food is the same... but it is ? No! So, for special content, some (not all) will pay.
Like for some concerts some are paying to be there frontstage and others are just looking for torrents. Why ? Because it is not the same ;-)

"Google is about to become quite a bit less useful" What a bunch of over-blown alarmist journalism. This will not hurt Google one iota.

I can tell you one thing, there is no way in hell I will pay to read Murdoch's 'news'!

Personally I think Salon has the best model, pay and get no ads, or don't pay and view the ads.

News as in fact based objective presentations of events is...wait for it....WORTHLESS!

Editorial is what makes news worth a damn.
It's editorial that I miss most in news papers.

I can get fact based snippets of information on the 6pm news. It's BORING.

News only becomes interesting when you have the back story, the expert opinions and the related trends. In other words Editorial!!!

A lot of blogs are shit. But there are gems out there. These blogs have experts in their field writing about what they know best. I receive their editorial each day in my news feeds.

How is Rupy going to compete with all of them? He can't. It doesn't matter how many editors/writers and sources he has working for him.

We are the mass. We are the linked hive mind. We are the internet Borg. We are linked 24x7 to news. It seems stupid to wait for 24 hours for a new paper to arrive.

The larger blogs out there have a unique opportunity. They can now prove that they can actually push interesting articles to their massive reader base. Unique content that is not paraphrased from other paid sources.

Each online blog/paper has access to the same news sources that Rupy has. NOW, prove that you can do a better job!

It's fun times for people in the news business!
It really is. This period will indeed shape the future of news.

And after the internet is done killing the news papers, it's time for the internet to set its sights on Toys 'R Us.

It is time for the 3D Printer to kill toy companies. Who's with me?
Buy a Pokemon action figure? Just print it. :D

I am off to check the DailyBeast.com

Peace out.

This is not exactly true, for a couple of reasons.

First, someone else in Asia has already pulled off enabling a pay wall (Apple Daily / Next Media), though they still leave themselves in Google (just the headlines to lure people to pay).

The same example, however, also shows that people may still get access to the contents. Someone *might* just pay and then post the content somewhere else for others to read (and of course this means people can still search for it in Google, Bing, etc). This is not supposed to happen, but it has.

But seriously, I don't know if any of this matters at all. If we can stop reading newspapers, we can stop reading online newspapers too. I don't know if it is us losing or them losing, but I suspect the latter.

Faulty logic alert! Murdoch and his advisors are making assumptions that have little basis in practical reality.
Many of us don't want to pay for news content. So what! There are a substantial number of people who will begin paying (grudgingly, perhaps) for content they previously accessed at no charge to them. That's a fact.
Hiding your site from Google ensures missing out on lots of people who don't mind paying for a subscription, even if they accessed the information for free previously.

Psssst. Don't tell Murdoch this. Google News would be so much better without his crap in the way of real news.

This is so exciting. Is Murdoch really going to make Google News more usable by clearing out all of his useless propaganda? That would be the first good thing Murdoch ever did for the web.

Hear, Hear!

I can understand why Microsoft wants this deal. They are trying to gain any edge they can on Google (probably out of desperation).
Microsoft should be focussing on innovation (as Google do) and not on this closed/stiffling business model.
If this goes through and other News providers follow suit, then start the campaign to boycott Bing! Microsoft will soon realise that Internet users are what matter!