Google to Make Peace With Murdoch

19 May 2010

Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt has today been in talks with Rupert Murdoch and other newspaper heads, to reach an agreement about supporting online subscription fees.

The talks are being widely perceived as a sign that tensions are thawing between Google and Murdoch.

Murdoch has repeatedly attacked Google for undermining news by allowing too much access to free content online. At the end of last year he went on to threaten Google with a court case for including his headlines in search results.

Ahead of the paywall which will be installed by The Times and Sunday times next month, the UK papers are currently attempting to withdraw their articles from appearing in the search engine results.

Schmidt said that away from public postering, he and Murdoch have a good relationship. "We have talked to Rupert and quite a few others. I think we currently have peace. We have talked to News Corp and other companies for a months on these sorts of things," Mr Schmidt told journalists.

"I would rather not talk about specific news on any deal. But we are a platform, not a competitor to newspapers. Today we have an advertising answer for them, but we would like to have other answers for them as well."

Industry experts are predicting that a compromise will be reached with Google that may involve some newscorporations incorporating the Google checkout system for the paywall.

Schmidt stated, "Google will not get into the content business, but we can build tools for it."

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