Old news: News Corp. (Fox news, WSJ, the Sun) thinks they can do better than google for bringing money to his news enterprises on-line via web searches. Breaking News: News Corp. has been in negotiations with Microsoft(Bing) on a deal which would de-list his companies on google and create a partnership with the Bing search engine. Whether that deal will revolve around just Fox news and the rest of its news sites, including Barron’s and the New York Post online or everything that News corp. owns, which would include Myspace and Hulu is as yet unknown. The deal would involve having customers pay to read news from his websites, where now readers get news for free from just about everywhere. The associated press and several other sites that seek greater profits, you can be sure, are watching closely to see if will be successful. Watch a comic take on this from the people at headzup:
Myspace and Hulu aside, this could potentially be a huge issue for News Corp. The deal, as I said before, would involve all News Corp sites being de-listed from Google, which currently has about an 85% share of all searches done right now on the Internet, as opposed to Microsoft’s Bing, which has about 3.5%. Which means that if this deal is successful Fox will, in an effort to increase it sales, move to a source that gets approximately 1/25th of the total amount of hits that google currently sends his way now. Hits generate income. Less hits, less money, larger operating losses.
Sounds like less than a great deal, but Rupert I am sure, knows what he is doing.
Still,That would be an extraordinarily large drop in the amount of people who actually look at fox news online, resulting in a smaller amount of advertising revenue coming in to Fox. And they have been having issues with their online businesses, losing revenue totaling $319,000,000 on operating losses of $128,000,000.
And forgoing the standard business model, because Rupert thinks that google is “stealing money” from him, and going to an all pay news site model, sounds like financial suicide to me. If I can get news for free from other sources, why would I pay him for it? It makes no sense to me, but Rupert, in his infinite wisdom, probably has an answer for that problem.
Oof. Good luck with bing Rupert, yer gonna need it. We’ll see what happens.
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The day has been a less than wonderful one for me. I’m not exactly sure what the hell I did to myself, but I managed to injure my upper back, right side badly enough where it hurts to turn my head or look down at any significant angle. Makes typing a bit of a bitch, but it isn’t impossible, and it’s easier than holding a cup of coffee, or anything else for that matter, with my right hand.
If you read my running commentary page, you’ll see my run numbers and what I did working out. The injury actually happened between the two events. I was fine this morning, great during the run, but after the run and before the alleged workout, I did something to the damn thing. I said there that it was my right teres minor, but that is mere speculation. I really don’t know. I’m not, after all, a doctor. I am happy that I have my wife helping out whenever and wherever she can. That makes me feel better, just knowing the assist is there if and when I need it.
If the pain subsides somewhat I may attempt one of my alleged workouts again tomorrow, but i won’t invite injury by pushing too hard on the affected area, and there will be no workout if there is excessive pain. Surprisingly, neither push-ups nor my modified squat thrusts hurt. It was the crunches that had me gasping in pain. I’ve had an Icy hot patch on the thing and a heating pad on it, both were a small short term help, but the pain is still there.
Ah well. Shit happens. No worries, so long as I have painkillers, I’ll be fine.
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That’s it from here. Later!
Today’s nugget’s, Via wikiquote: While it’s impossible to be completely prepared for a downturn of this magnitude, we began priming ourselves for a weakening economy earlier last year. We have implemented strict cost cutting measures across all our operations. We have reduced headcount in individual businesses where appropriate and we’ve scaled back on capital expenditures. Even in plush times, we have never been a company that tolerates facts. So in times like these, we are better positioned to weather this cycle than our competitors. Rupert Murdoch
It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on. Ursula LeGuin






