Rupert Murdoch Begins Blocking News Aggregators, Search Engines

by Joe Coscarelli | 11:15 am, January 9th, 2010

» 10 comments

New Corp honcho Rupert Murdoch has been known to refer to those running the web as “plagiarists” and “parasites,” threatening to remove all of his content from search engines like Google (especially if Bing is willing to pay up). Many wondered if he was bluffing, but now the process seems to have begun, with the Times Online blocking aggregation of its stories.

Aggregator NewsNow, via The Next Web, is reporting that they are being blocked from indexing Times Online stories:

As a consequence of this action — apparently the first change to the Times Online’s blocking policy since May 2008 — two million visitors to NewsNow.co.uk every month will no longer find headlines and links to content on the Times Online site in their news search results.

According to Struan Bartlett, Managing Director and Chairman of NewsNow: “It is lamentable that News International has chosen to request we stop linking to their content and providing in-bound traffic and potential subscribers to the Times Online and right now it looks as though NewsNow has been singled out. We note that no other major search engine has been blocked by NI in this manner. NewsNow is not fundamentally different to other news search engines that are part of the Internet infrastructure, such as Google News and Yahoo. Why block us and not them?”

The blocking has been technically implemented via the robots.txt protocol, a convention for requesting search engines, web spiders and other web robots refrain from asking for pages from all or part of a website.

Whether this will be the first domino in a line of things to come remains to be seen — Google News is, of course, far more noteworthy than a “homegrown” UK aggregator — but it is certainly a move in the direction previously threatened by Murdoch and his companies. But if it does happen, expect a far larger outcry when Murdoch and crew start blocking sites that steer the internet conversation.

Google, NewsNow, rupert murdoch, Rupert Murdoch Google, Rupert Murdoch Search Engines, search engines, The Next Web

m

YES!!!!! Watch those hits drop!

Trust me. It won’t be weeks. It’ll be probably months, maybe a year or two – until they reverse this decision. Oh well!
J Baustian

Someone needs to take the first step, even if it’s unpopular. Murcoch just has more courage than most publishers.
BenSpider

courage? how about stupidity?

One has to wonder about how in touch conservatives are with technology.
Media Me

Way ta go, Rupie. Maybe next you can make all the teabaggers pay to watch Faux News.
Cactus

NewsNow IS fundamentally different from Google and Yahoo in that they offer a “premium” service that runs a whopping £75 a month ($120). A service which offers no original content — just a “customized” news feed.

The UK’s newspaper association threatened them with a lawsuit if they didn’t share these fees with certain sites — so NewsNow pulled them from its £75 service a month ago. Problem is, the Times Online wasn’t one of those “certain” sites, so NewsNow went on merrily with that content.

Murdoch banned NewsNow and nobody else. If someone was “customizing” my free content and billing people $120 a month for it, I’d be blocking them, too. I’ll wait till he blocks a 100% free aggregator before I call the beginning of the War On Aggregators™.

(And I can’t believe I’m taking Rupert Murdoch’s side on something. Good grief.)
http://soupsoup.tumblr.com Anthony De Rosa

Google scrapes actual content from the articles, News Now simply links to them, sending News Corp more traffic.

Murdoch fundamentally doesn’t understand how the internet works. I understand and support him trying to protect his content but that wasn’t what NewsNow was doing, they’re helping funnel more clicks to his website.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Maya-Henny-Desva/100000210558912 Maya Henny Desva

If you have become bored of searching in a single search engine, this may be very useful to you. Today search engines hold an important place in the web because it gives a lot of information which we required. To get any details we normally use the biggest Google or Yahoo. If you will have a chance to access multiple engines in a same time how do you feel? The time has come to you to access the multiple search engines. You can use OR or AND options while searching in the engines. You can have different results from different type of search engines. Click : nowgoogle.com
http://www.swissarmyjew.com Keeva

I am not a fan of this decision, but I respect that it is Murdoch’s content and he gets to decide how it is distributed. He doesn’t have to understand the internet or its workings. If he wants to charge for it, that is his call. And, most likely, his loss.

The concept that everything online should be free to everyone is contrary to basic free enterprise.
corvin81

Hello, Good morning I absolutely dig your article, i would be very honored if you allow me to publish a heartful review on your incredible webblog on my little News site would you allow me that?

Sincerely, John Peds
Author of how to cook salmon
jennielynsan

This is wonderful of the best blogs in the field of teaching. If I don’t come in for a couple of days, there are so many stakes that it’ll make me a couple of hr just to go through whatever I omitted!! Kudos.

Thanks. wonderful wonderful info(information) here keep up Culinary Skills Egg Salad Recipe French Onion Soup Recipe the versatile worked. I cannot really provide a more creative comment as i’m abit out of my deph but i will be checking back here for further updates.