Murdoch's Google Threat

Rupert Murdoch may have the secret to saving newspapers—forcing readers to pay for content. However, search engines such as Google, which allows users to bypass pay walls on such Murdoch-owned sites as The Wall Street Journal, have complicated that plan. During an interview with Sky News Australia, the newspaper mogul said that papers including The Sun, The Times of London, and The Wall Street Journal would contemplate blocking Google completely once their pay walls were ready. In recent months, Murdoch has blasted Google, calling it a "parasite" and accusing it of "kleptomania" for including News Corp. content on Google News. Murdoch also said that he did not think Google's usage of News Corp. content constituted "fair use" under the law, a defense aggregation websites have used to justify their reproduction of excerpts from news stories.