The News Corp. chairman was speaking recently at the National Press Club in Washington DC at the filming of an episode of The Kalb Report. Murdoch tol

The News Corp. chairman was speaking recently at the National Press Club in Washington DC at the filming of an episode of The Kalb Report. Murdoch told those in attendance: “We’re going to stop people like Google, or Microsoft or whoever, from taking our stories for nothing. Search engines have produced a river of gold, but those words are being taken mostly from the newspapers. I think they ought to stop it, that the newspapers ought to stand up and let them do their own reporting.”

“Google believe that there is little-to-no point in starting up their own news reporting service as there simply isn’t a need at the moment with so many other sites publishing stories every second. Google simply brings the best of those sites to the attention of their users for free.” commented Matt Bullas, Managing Director of SEO Consult. “From an SEO point of view, Murdoch’s inbound links would of course suffer if he gets his wish. If people are only allowed to access a website through a paid subscription then they won’t be able to send news stories to their friends, publish links on their blogs, tweet interesting articles etc without their readers signing up. They’ll seek other sources of free news – and there are plenty out there. As such, Mr. Murdoch may need to explore other forms of website optimisation should he wish for his News Corp. websites to continue to be a success in a crowded online marketplace if subscriptions are indeed brought in.”