News Corp's Revenue Strategy

Much has been written about Rupert Murdock's comments on free vs. paid content online. One of the crown jewels of his publishing empire, the Wall Street Journal, has continued to keep a significant portion of its online content under lock and key. Murdock has made many more comments recently about making the websites for his other publications partially subscription based.

But the biggest buzz came from his comments about removing News Corp. sites from Google search results. Like many publishers, News Corp has complained that search engines and aggregators are getting a free ride by linking to the originating articles. In an interview on Sky News Australia (a News Corp. company), Murdock said that search companies, "steal our stories." He added that he would rather have fewer links and more paid subscribers.