Murdoch to block stories on Google news?

End of the news as we know it?

After Rupert Murdoch's News Corp reported loses of GBP£2 billion in the year up until June, the billionaire has been looking to boost revenues, primarily though making users pay for content online - mainly, news. However, today comes news that he plans to go head to head with internet giant Google, by saying he will remove stories from his News Corps affiliates from Google's search index to prevent people viewing them for free.

Speaking to Sky News Australia, Murdoch said that papers in his media empire such as The Sun, The Times and the Wall Street Journal, would "consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web."

Murdoch has attributed the fall in News Corps' profits (7.8 percent in some sectors) in part to Google, accusing it accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. However, they have been slow to remove their websites from the search giant's indexes... until now.

"I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said. "We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it's not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story - but if you're not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form."

Controversial plans

Previously, Murdoch has said that by charging people for the news, his company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content" saying, "the digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution."

He has also said that once his New Corps starts charging users, other websites will follow suit saying that quality media is not cheap and people would be willing to pay for "insightful and original perspectives".

Rupert Murdoch has drawn fire from his criticism of "online news" before, but when he bought MySpace for $580 million, many thought his stance had soften. His plans for charging for the news has also been constantly delayed, leading many to think it was just an empty threat, but with MySpace losing money due to Facebook, Murdoch looks to be reasserting himself.

Murdoch has said he does not believe that search engines such as Google fall under "fair use" rules, which many sites cite as their justification for reproducing excerpts of news stories online.

In the interview, which can be watched below, Murdoch says, "The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it - steal our stories, we say they steal our stories - they just take them.

"That's Google, that's Microsoft, that's Ask.com, a whole lot of people ... they shouldn't have had it free all the time, and I think we've been asleep."

Whether his plans go ahead, like they were meant to over the summer, remains to be seen.

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