Holding out for a hero - Microsoft?
Media owners are salivating over the idea that Microsoft is going to save them in a hugely expensive attempt to compete with Google. " Microsoft makes move to cut out Google " in the FT: "Microsoft are doing exactly the right thing and asking exactly the right questions," Richard Titus, chief executive of Associated Northcliffe Digital. "Any competition to Google is a good thing," one UK publisher said. Tom Curley, chief executive of the Associated Press, said last month that Microsoft was willing to accept “principles” such as favouring AP stories in search results over others that regurgitate its news, or helping it track its content. “We are only going to work with those who use our principles,” he added. “We stand at an enviable moment where Microsoft and Google have decided to go to war,” he said. You can smell the desperation of people whose business model has been overthrown - not by any underhand behaviour or cheating from Google, but by a world wh...