Microsoft and NewsCorp Potential Deal – could it mean curtains for Google?

The web is all a-quiver at the moment by the announcement that Microsoft could be teaming up with News Corp in the fight to knock Google off the top spot in the delivery of information on the web.

The as yet unconfirmed deal would see Mircosoft paying News Corps to "de-index" their news content from Google. The understanding at this stage is that the news content would still be indexed by Microsoft's search engine Bing.

With News Corps properties ranging from The Times to the Sun, MySpace and Fox, depending on the depth of this deal, things could get interesting. Murdoch has basically set out a roadmap for shaking things up for Google's market share, especially if the likes of DMGT (Daily Mail/Mail On Sunday) and Trinity Mirror (Daily Mirror, Daily Record) follow suit and pull their content from Google's index.

So, what could all this mean? Since the particulars of the deal can not yet be confirmed (or even if it’s going ahead) we can only speculate. However, here are a few predictions:

Impact on Search Engine Marketing

1. Businesses that have invested heavily on making sure their sites feature prominently on Google will have to reassess their online marketing strategy to cater to an even more fragmented audience
2. Google will have to re-define what they consider to be an authoritative website if news sites are removed from the index
3. Social media will play a larger role in SEM as people use social media channels to spread news related content.

When you consider that much of what we read is distributed via online word of mouth, i.e. social media channel like Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc. Is it realistic for online newspapers to try to make people pay for content or for sites to restrict which search engines have access to it? Once it’s out there, copying content to a blog or other site which is still being crawled by Google would be simple enough. There are already systems out there that allow us to scrape the web for news and information, allowing us to populate our own site's pages with content we deem relevant for our audiences. So, although it seems like this deal could be a thorn in Google's side, it may not be as big a pinch as it first appears.

Some practical thoughts

Imagine News Corp and others go through with this and decide to stop playing with Google. They would suddenly be faced with the challenge of not only making sure that all of their content is coded to prohibit Google spiders from crawling the sites, but they would need to be sure that other engines can still access it. Likewise, it would be incumbent on them to ensure that all future content is delivered to the engines of their choosing. Not a small task and perhaps more complicated than it sounds given the depth of information currently out there and being churned out by the minute.

All in all, an interesting notion, but could be a pain to enforce.

At the moment, Google is claiming that they will stick to their policy with regards to respecting the wishes of site owners and not crawling sites when they've been instructed not to, but it wouldn't be the first time Google changes its tune when it suits them. So, what happens next is anyone’s guess, but it will be interesting to see if all the other kids finally gang up on the big kid on the block and how that will effect the people that ultimately matter, the end users...