Well according to George Michael he’s the Devil. I’m referring to Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft’s recent venture with News Corp. It seems they have formed a joint venture in an attempt to control what the public gets on the web. In a nutshell, Microsoft wants to control the search space and News Corp wants to control the News and Newspapers.

Many say the deal is flawed. There is talk of Murdoch pulling all of his news feeds from Google and giving exclusive access to Bing which if you don’t know is Microsoft’s latest attempt at search. This in an attempt to increase the use of Bing since you won’t find the news you are looking for through Google. I’m sure if taken too far this could raise the attention of a few on Capital Hill.

I had just began to think Microsoft was turning a new leaf. I thought they learned the lessons of the Anti-Trust case against them and were going to play nice with others. Instead we get Dr. Evil.

Some are looking at the de-indexing of content from Google. Murdoch want you to pay for news. And he says you will. “We intend to charge for all our news websites … If we’re successful, we’ll be followed by all media.”

I really don’t think this pig has wings. It will be interesting to watch this unfold. Google could loose all of their news content, I still would not use Bing. It is not as good as Google. Perhaps as time goes on and it grows as a search engine, it will improve. But I don’t care for the practices Microsoft and New Corp are using here. Instead of using this as an opportunity to take advantage of a new method of delivering news and changing the world. They are going to play hard and dirty and try to force themselves on the market.

I will always have this vision of Steve Balmer etched in my memory. I suppose it’s better than these.