Well, the battle just got a whole lot dirtier, as The Financial Times has uncovered news that Microsoft has approached several news content providers, offering them money if they opt to “de-index” their sites from Google.
It all started with News content providers having a dispute with Google. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch has threatened with legal action to prevent Google from “stealing” articles published in his newspapers.
Microsoft took utmost advantage of the opportunity, and added the fuel to the fire. Even though it was News Corp. that first approached Microsoft about the plan, The FT got to know that Microsoft has approached other news content providers to extend the deal by bribing them. However, on being questioned, both News Corp. and Microsoft declined to comment.
As usual, Google was neutral to the news, they didn’t have anything to say about this specific story, they had a general statement “Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue,” Matt Brittin, Google’s UK director.
Though it’s important for search engines to index news, the thing gets more serious for news content providers. due to growth of eMedia, many of them have been struggling for a long time and now finally trying to make profit from the internet and if it fails, they are in serious trouble.
Justification holds in the hands of News content providers, and If this continues, News agency will gain (by both saving their premium content and getting Money from Microsoft) but search quality overall lags.
What do you think? What is more important?