Rupert Murdoch and Google Part 2

1) Sticking with the status quo is obviously changing their business for the worse.

2) No one in the entire world has solved the huge reducing revenue problem for content producers, so we can't say there is a better way for sure yet.

3) The web seems to have a short memory. It's all about now, not about then. If they change back, I don't see much changing for them.

I personally think that sticking everything behind a registration wall with no external indexing, while selling ads to go alongside their content should be a better model.

It's essentially what facebook does, and it seems to be working for them. Google is great for the user, but not for the content owner used to large revenues for said content.

Edit: Thinking about it, google really do "own" the worlds content; they monetize it for extremely little effort on their behalf. I love this, and so do you, but from a content producers point of view it's horrible. They used to be in control of distribution & now have to give a significant portion of the revenues they once had to a company who merely index the information, or others that make near-automated efforts to aggregate it. The only way they can possibly get back that revenue is to wall the garden.

Anyways, the bright side is that this is really Murdoch's risk. There are no negative side effects I can think of. Online news is one business that does not suffer from lack of competition. So if Rupert wants to risk it, more power to him.