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    Clueless Robber Barron

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...Xq1RPPUIPSPLbJ

    The UK's Times and Sunday Times are putting up search walls in addition to pay walls.

    The papers, which plan to start charging users for access to their newly redesigned Web sites in late June, will prevent Google and other search engines from linking to their stories.

    Although they are not the first papers to erect pay barriers around their content, the papers are going a step further by making most of their site invisible to Google's Web crawler. Except for their homepages, no stories will show up on Google.

    Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...#ixzz0p8jdiqsm
    The first, and so far the only, comment put it nicely:
    John S.

    05/27/2010 7:09 AM

    You make it sound like he's doing something important, spending money, building infrastructure, forcing Google to obey him and do something they don't want to, etc., etc. In reality he's just editing a text file on his web site.

    Every web site has a "robots.txt" and Google is always very good about obeying the rules in it. Editing robots.txt doesn't cost him a penny and he's been free to do so from the beginning.
    ...
    The only thing Murdoch might profit from is the lesson that Google (strange he doesn't mention Bing?) offers FREE advertising for "his content". For a business not to advertise is to fail. By clicking on a Google link the browser displays not only "his content" (his only if he manufactures the news he reports) but the ads Murdoch surrounds "his content" with. Without the Google links (or a bookmark established after clicking on the first Google link discovered), or a direct knowledge of the news site domain name, Murdoch will find his traffic falling off considerably and fewer readers will be clicking the ad links which put money in his pocket.

    News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch has taken aim at Google in the past for profiting from publishers' content on the Web without paying for it.
    Yes he has, and it looks like he hasn't learned his lesson.

    News reporting is something anyone with an Internet connection and a blog (or forum) can do. Unprofessional? How professional is reporting that a candidate makes a "tickle" run up your leg, or that the Tea Party is a "grass roots" organization? Most people who think for themselves, and use Google and other search engines to sound out the news they find, eventually get the entire picture of any particular news event. The rest will continue to do what they've always done, even with the printed media, read only sources which feed their world view -- Left or Right.
    "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

    #2
    Re: Clueless Robber Barron

    The "Dirty Digger" and his antics are very well known this side of the pond. Could he be the modern day King Canute?

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Clueless Robber Barron

      No doubt, but I suspect Murdoch would take the second interpretation of that tale.
      "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
      – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

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