Over the weekend we revealed that News Corp and Microsoft were in talks to “de-index” News Corp’s content from Google, in favour of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

By today it was clear that this is part of a broader move by Microsoft to boost Bing by getting publishers to cut their sites off from Google.

It sounds like a long shot, but the FT’s John Gapper says it “could be a pivotal moment in internet economics.” He points out that random traffic from search engines is not as valuable as repeat traffic from paying subscribers.

“Mr Murdoch appears to have decided he will not lose very much by ditching Google traffic and even a fairly small payment from Microsoft would compensate. He is attempting to get distributors to pay for content in the way that US cable operators pay cable networks for programming.”

However even if “negotiations between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Microsoft resulted in an exclusive deal with Bing, an alliance would make little long term difference to the media landscape,” writes the FT’s Lex column.

“Microsoft has poured money into its online division for years without profit. It cannot afford to fund the newspaper industry indefinitely. Its search market share of 10 per cent is too small to force Google to change its behaviour.”

Read John Gapper’s post here. Read the full Lex note here.

Google gave us a good first look at its Chrome operating system today. It has some interesting features, but is far from finished - the first devices using it are still a year away.

Google’s ambitions for Chrome also seem modest at present - it will run on low-specification netbooks. But everyone seemed to have low expectations for Google’s other OS - Android - when it was launched last year, and look at it now. Continue reading "Google Chrome OS - an Android in the making?"

Google is giving the world a first look at its new Chrome operating system today with a briefing for media at its Mountain View campus.

Chrome was announced in July and is due to be available to consumers in the second half of next year, but there has been speculation that the OS could be available in a beta version as early as this month.

FT techtalk this week came live from the Google event,  read our transcript below. Continue reading "FT techtalk - Polishing up Google Chrome OS"

Nowhere was the anger at Google’s original digital books plan greater than in Germany, where it was seen as blatant cultural imperialism.

So you’d think that Friday night’s news that German books (along with most of the world’s non-English language publications) would now be excluded from the vast digital library would have been greeted with joy.

Not a bit of it.  According to this report, the head of the German publishers and booksellers association now thinks that being left out will only increase the global dominance of the English language. “Progress is now passing us by,” he is quoted as saying.

Droid, the most hyped Android phone to date - even Google promoted it on its home page today - is finally available to buy in Verizon Wireless stores.

More than 100 people queued at midnight outside a midtown Manhattan store to be among the first members of the public to get their hands on one.

I’ve been lucky enough to have one on loan for more than a week now, so here’s my assessment after the jump of whether it has been worth the wait and queues. Continue reading "Droid - the good, the bad and the ugly"

Google has had several years of tussles now with privacy regulators. Three years ago European data protection commissioners began question what the company was doing with all the personal data it was gleaning from users of its search engine. In the past year, the company has faced outrage - at least in some pockets like Italy, Japan and Switzerland - over Street View, which provides panoramic, eye-level views of every street of major cities around the world.

Earlier this year, a leading privacy group called on the US Federal Trade Commission to consider shutting down Google’s web services until the company could better safeguard personal data. There have been a number of instances where Google Docs, Google Desktop and Gmail have had glitches which made users personal documents visible to others. Continue reading "Google’s ‘dashboard’ privacy controls are a good start"

From this week’s Digital Business edition:

The arrival of a giant chocolate eclair on the front lawn at Google last month had an extra significance, other than as the latest example of outlandish artwork installed at the headquarters of the world’s biggest internet company.

It joined a huge cupcake and a well-rounded doughnut, both sitting under the watchful eye of a large green robot.

Continue reading View from the Valley

Google is expected to launch its own self-branded smartphone before the year is out, according to Ashok Kumar, Northeast Securities analyst

It will follow up with a series of phones running its Android operating system, as well as launching a branded netbook running its new Chrome operating system early next year, the analyst told me. Continue reading "Google to take on iPhone with own phone - analyst"