Murdoch wants to remove his newspapers from Google?

A few years ago, right around the time News Corp acquired the WSJ, I lost a bet that Murdoch’s media empire would about face on pay-walls: that they would beat other big name sites like the New York Times to opening all of their content up and make a killing on highly contextual ads.

Boy, was I ever wrong. Well, at least wrong about what would actually happen, I’m still convinced it’s a pretty good idea. Never could I have imagined, though, that News Corp would take the step of removing all of their content from Google, that’s like saying that you can’t buy the Wall Street Journal from a street vendor, you can only get a copy from the headquarters on the Avenue of the Americas. Bizarre. Almost as weird as Rupert not really understanding how the WSJ’s pay-wall actually works.

One thing I do agree with Murdoch on is the skewed idea that search engines and aggregators are covered by “fair use”, a claim I don’t think Google has actually ever made, but legions of pro-bloggers certainly try to get away with.