Not content with Rupert Murdoch kicking up a fuss about online content, The Mirror Group have now jumped into the battle too.

Back in November, Murdoch famously criticised Google for allowing readers to read part of the articles on newspaper websites without charging. It threatened to block the search engine but mysteriously all seems to have now gone quiet on the subject…! Then a few weeks ago, out of nowhere, Murdoch decided to block the news aggregate site NewsNow from trawling it’s website. The corporation objects to the fact that the news site charges subsciption fees for clients to access newspaper articles.

And guess what? The Mirror Group have now done exactly the same thing! The Daily Mirror has claimed that by blocking the site, it is protecting its investment in online journalism. It claims it has no problem with aggregrators such as Google News who make no money from linking to their site.

But Murdoch still claims to have a problem with Google. The question is, why hasn’t he done anything about it? Many believe he is now having second thoughts about blocking the world’s largest search engine.

Could it be that he merely decided to block NewsNow to see what impact it would have on his publications, before blocking larger aggregators such as Google News? Quite possibly – but blocking a fairly small website such as NewsNow, might not have been the sensible option.

Google News is used daily by millions of users across the world. If Murdoch believed he could estimate Google’s impact on his sites, by measuring the impact from a smaller site, I think he’ll be disappointed. I can’t see how there’s anyway that anyone can measure Google’s impact against another site and I think  it might be best if Murdoch stops trying before he loses even more money.

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