News Corp Dithers on Google Pullout While AP Asks For More Traffic

News Corp has indicated that its expected withdrawal from Google search results won’t be for months, while on the same day AP has met with Google asking for more traffic.

News Corp’s chief digital officer Jonathan Miller told the Monaco Media Forum that the withdrawal from Google’s search results will occur in “months and quarters – not weeks.” He went on to say that “the traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

Across the Atlantic, Tom Curley, president of the Associated Press, was reportedly ready to meet Friday with officials at Google about getting a better deal for links to AP stories provided by the search engine.

Curley wants Google to elevate the ranking of AP stories so they appear more prominently in search results. He also wants a cut of the revenue from ads Google runs alongside the top news stories. Curley claims that AP gets paid for less than 15 percent of its stories on the Web.

What does it say about News Corp’s stance when the main body owned by media outlets in the United State, the main cheerleader against new media is actually asking for more Google traffic, the same traffic that Murdoch and Miller say is worthless?

The delay to News Corp pulling out of Google once again proves that News Corp is all talk and no action when it comes to their constant attacks against the likes of Google. There’s ZERO technological basis for the delay because as we’ve repeated time and time again: one line in a Robots.txt file is all that’s required. If they had the courage of their convictions they’d be taking themselves out of Google not next week, not tomorrow, but today.