Microsoft Wants to Pay News Corp. to Move Its News Web Sites Off Google FT

Rupert Murdoch’s threat to keep Google from indexing News Corp. Web sites has taken a new twist, with Google rival Microsoft in talks to pay News Corp. to remove them, the Financial Times reports.

Microsoft has also approached other publishers about removing their content from Google, as well, according to the FT. Any such move would presumably boost Microsoft’s new search engine Bing, and put pressure on Google to start paying for search content.

Microsoft and News Corp. declined to comment.

--Elizabeth Jensen