Rupert Murdoch who is the face of Sky has announced that he no longer wants Google to index his web pages in its search engine results. Murdoch spoke about his anger towards Google as well as his intentions for the Sky news website to become a subscription website during an interview last week.

Murdoch made it clear that he no longer wanted Google to display Sky news links in its listings. When asked why he said “Why do I want a one time user who accidently comes across the sky news site accessing my website?” The interviewer then returned the question of “Surely having this user visit once means they may view your site on a more regular basis?”.

Murdoch’s argument about the Sky news website becoming a subscription website is that it costs time and money in order to post the content onto the site. This was a fair point however the Sky news website is a just a method of increasing Sky’s profile as a company. In addition to this, to claim Sky make no money from their website maybe true, but its hard to believe they make a loss either, due to the rich vain of advertising they have the capability of receiving.

When asked about the expected price to read the news from the Sky website he referred to the price of a newspaper and claimed the website would not exceed this cost. Murdoch believes the web has the ability to overtake newspapers and questioned how many under 30 year olds read newspapers these days.

In my opinion this is a fair point however there are too many other websites which users have the ability to access for free which will effectively see Sky news readers find alternatives news websites to read. In return to his opinion of Google indexing Sky news web pages I feel that this is unjustified criticism because you can prevent Google from indexing your web pages if you want to, however Sky have obviously chosen not to do this.