Why Microsoft shouldn't crawl into bed with Rupert Murdoch

Microsoft is reportedly considering paying Rupert Murdoch a substantial amount of money to remove all News Corp. content from Google's search results, and instead have them listed on Microsoft's Bing search engine. Of all the bad ideas floated by Microsoft through the years, this is one of the worst. Microsoft will have spent a lot and gained very little, Murdoch will once again pick the pockets of a partner, and Google won't even notice a revenue drop.

The report first surfaced in the Financial Times, and was later reported on Computerworld. The Financial Times reported that News Corp. content, ranging from the Wall Street Journal to The Sun of the UK, would no longer be available as part of Google search results. Instead, their content would only be available on Bing.

The report didn't report on the terms of any deal, and it also said that Microsoft is approaching other online publishers to do the same thing. You can be sure, though, that Murdoch won't be asking for chump change --- except that Microsoft will play the chump.

What would Microsoft gain from the deal? Very little, indeed. Murdoch has only one newspaper that creates content of any real news value --- the Wall Street Journal. But most of the best Wall Street Journal content is behind a for-pay firewall, and the text of them won't be available via Bing. Often, the Wall Street general news stories are free, but they don't have much value. The New York Times, Washington Post, and many other newspapers do a better job of general news coverage. The valuable Wall Street Journal content --- its financial coverage --- is behind the firewall. Murdoch isn't going to tear down that firewall for Microsoft, because he makes a substantial amount of money out of paid subscriptions.

That leaves the rest of the News Corp. newspapers, and it's a motley group. In the U.K. he specializes in down-market, trashy coverage...come to think of it, he does the same in the U.S. as well.

As I wrote in my blog post, "Microsoft Bing's approach to local news: If it bleeds, it leads," Bing already has an arrangement with one of Murdoch's properties, the Boston Herald, to provide local news on Bing for Massachusetts. Among the headlines in the Herald on a typical day were "Pervert puts Boxford on edge," and "Grandmother's body found in pond," while the newspaper seemed to all but ignore important news such as the Senate race to replace Ted Kennedy.

Does Microsoft really think a substantial number of people want to read that sort of thing? And does Microsoft really want to tarnish the Bing brand with highlighting that material --- and even paying for it?

Beyond that, Google doesn't get enough revenue from searches that bring up News Corp. material for it to be of great value. Google claims that overall, news content of any type brings in little revenue. The Financial Times quotes Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director, as saying about news content: "Economically it's not a big part of how we generate revenue." The tiny slice of content from News Corp. represents only a small part of that small part.

Microsoft could spend its time and money doing better things than crawling into bed with Murdoch. Something tells me that when Microsoft wakes up and looks at its bed partner, it will wonder just what it was drinking the night before to end up where it did.