News Corp could sign web search deal with Bing

Microsoft has held talks with News Corp about pulling its content from Google, according to a report in today’s Financial Times.

The FT also says that Microsoft has approached “other big online publishers” in an attempt to persuade them to de-index their sites from Google.

Microsoft recently launched the Bing search engine and is keen to increase its market share, which currently stands at around 3% in the UK.

News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch has accused Google of acting as a “parasite” for featuring News Corp content in its search index.

He said: “The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them.

“That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people… they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”

It is thought that if Microsoft goes ahead with deals with British newspapers, their content would be given prominent positions on Bing’s results pages.