Seriously… have you ever used Bing? I don’t care if I can customize the background to a picture of a sunset or a side street in Italy. It’s totally cumbersome and unnecessary and the flight search thing is unhelpful and stupid. Microsoft has had to dip into its expansive cash reserves to pay corporations to use and promote it because it just isn’t working the way they wanted. I know I’m a little behind the times here, since Bing was launched a while ago.But I just had to let you know how I feel about it because of its relevance to this post.
I should also tell you how I feel about Rupert Murdoch, but I hate to be redundant.
Anyway, there have been “early talks” that these two delightful entities could be joining forces all too soon… sort of. I first learned about this a few days ago from a New York Times article, (for the record, I don’t usually read NYT for its news content… I only pay attention to their amazing photos and photographers!).
A quick summary of the issue: Murdoch’s media conglomerate, News Corporation, has started discussing the possibility of a pact with Microsoft about removing its news content from Google’s search engine and making it exclusively available on Bing. News Corp. would be paid by Microsoft to do this. Murdoch has expressed quite a bit of interest about getting paid for the company’s online content lately, since News Corp. owns a whole crapload of newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times of London, etc. The Financial Times first reported on the discussions, which are very likely to involve Microsoft paying News Corp. to index its content on Bing.
Says the NYT article: “It’s unclear how a partnership with news organizations that fragmented search results and content on the Internet would be received. The notion of walled off communities on the Web falls into a thorny area of debate.”
The concept would give the newspaper industry the potential to finally generate revenue from online news beyond advertising. Whatever, that’s fine… I like newspapers, and I don’t mind Murdoch’s soft spot for the newspaper industry.
But if something like this actually happens, we can say goodbye to net neutrality forever. If the majority of the world’s online news content can be privatized by Murdoch, then the possibilities are endless for corporations everywhere. It’ll be a win-win – control which news the world has access to, make obscene amounts of profits in the process.
How is this not restraint of trade?? I sincerely hope that the FCC will step in before this idea can gain too much momentum, but who knows.
And, legal matters aside, how could News Corporation literally remove content from search engines… like, what would be the internet mechanics involved? I know I’m no computer whiz, and I just don’t get it. If anybody’s reading this and knows how, please explain it to me!
It was frightening to explore the issue in class… but it’s sickening to find examples of it happening outside of class because it makes you realize just how real and plausible it is.
But, on the lighter side… if net neutrality goes to hell and corporate ownership of online content becomes a trend, then I would like to buy and control all of the world’s internet porn. Seriously. I think it would make me richer than Murdoch himself.
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