Information wants to be free, reporters want to be paid, Part 31

A little competition is good for business, right? And perhaps it would be good for the newspaper business.

The Wall Street Journal reports that its boss at News Corp., whether that is news tycoon Rupert Murdoch himself is unclear, is in talks with Microsoft to cut off Google so News Corp. content would be exclusive to Microsoft's search engine called Bing. News Corp. owns a number of newspapers around the world, as well as Fox News and the social networking site MySpace.

The WSJ article reports: "News Corp. and other news outlets have said they want major Web sites to pay directly to use their content, though the news organizations haven't necessarily been specific about how to do so.

"Microsoft's efforts to become a bigger player in the search market and its deep financial resources have made it a potentially appealing alternative to Google for publishers looking for ways to charge for content.

"The company is battling with Google to better its position in the lucrative search market, and has steadily gained small amounts of market share since it launched a new version of its search engine, called Bing, earlier this year. Microsoft accounted for 9.9% of the U.S. search market in October, while Google had 65.4%, according to comScore."

A blog posting at Barron's, another News Corp. property, had this intriguing headline: "Did Murdoch Just Figure Out How To Save The Newspaper Industry?"

Let the bidding wars begin ... before we all die!