Media mogul wants to revive idea of paying for news – how quaint
Is the web’s free-ride coming to an end? Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been talking with Microsoft about making its online content available only via the newish Bing search engine. It’s relative simple to block out Google—just add a line of code and the web engine will ignore your content—but few have reason to do so, given that more than 65 percent of all search inquiries in the United States are made via that site. (Bing handles 9.9 percent of U.S. searches.) However, Murdoch has been braying for months about the need for news organisations to take control of their own content and rein in the web “pirates.” Pay walls may be next on his agenda.