Microsoft To Pay News Sources to Drop Google Indexing

Microsoft is reportedly making a big play for the Internet news market, offering payment to online publishers for pulling their news indexing from Google. Specifically, New Corp is named as one of the major publishers Microsoft has approached with the plan. News Corp owns a variety of large newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and The Sun (U.K.). According to the Financial Times’ report, Microsoft has also approached other major publishers.

The move is seen as a way of cutting into Google’s profits and helping to fortify Microsoft’s own Bing search engine. The move could also set a new market precedent in which search engines pay for news content, a precedent that could help a media industry that has struggled to carve out a financial niche in the age of free digital content. Neither Microsoft or News Corp commented on the reports. For its part, Google downplayed the importance of news to its overall revenue stream. [via Financial Times]