Report: Rupert Murdoch “Ready To Sue” Google

Although a few months have passed since the last big flareup, News Corp. may still be willing to go to war with Google.  A fresh report indicates that Rupert Murdoch is indeed prepared to take the search giant to court, and has been talking to Microsoft about an exclusive deal, too.

Gabriel Sherman recently published a long profile of Murdoch for New York magazine, and within the profile, quoted someone he described as "a senior media executive."  This person said with regards to the CEO and chairman of News Corp., "He's pretty tightly wound up over Google and has been ready to sue them.  He doesn't trust them at all."

Then there was another interesting tidbit: apparently the Chief Digital Officer of News Corp., Jonathan Miller, "has also been in talks with Microsoft about possibly pulling all of News Corp.'s content from Google and signing an exclusive distribution deal with Bing."

Unfortunately, potential timetables weren't outlined; there's no telling whether Murdoch is willing to spend years negotiating with Google, or if he'll unleash the lawyers next week.

Still, it sounds like Murdoch's statements about blocking Google weren't just so much bluster or a bluff.  A showdown over whether or not online news should be free remains possible.

European Commission Turns Magnifying Glass On Google

Google may soon find it necessary to send another plane full of lawyers across the Atlantic.  European regulators have decided to take a closer look at the company's business practices in response to three separate antitrust complaints.

Foundem, a price comparison site based in the UK, and eJustice, a French legal search engine, claim Google's hit them with search penalties because they compete with the search giant.  Ciao! from Bing, meanwhile, is upset about AdSense terms and conditions.

These complaints might constitute grounds for a formal antitrust investigation.  Google doesn't appear too concerned, though.  On the European Public Policy Blog, Julia Holtz, the company's senior competition counsel, wrote, "Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners.  This is not the case."

She then continued, "We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market.  We believe our business practices reflect those commitments."

Holtz also hinted that a certain rival of Google's might be behind much of this.  Ciao! from Bing is owned by Microsoft, after all, and Foundem belongs to an organization (the Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace) that's sponsored by Microsoft. 

Anyway, no targets or deadlines have been set with regards to when the European Commission will come to some conclusion.

Xerox Sues Google, Yahoo

Google and Yahoo get sued on a regular basis, often by tiny outfits with no chance of winning.  But now, the two companies are facing a much more serious lawsuit, as Xerox, which has a market cap of almost $8 billion and a genuine legal team, is taking them to court.

Xerox claims that Google and Yahoo have infringed on two patents it holds.  Susan Decker explained earlier this morning, "One patent, issued in 2004, is for a way to automatically generate a query based on keyword searches. . . .  The second patent, issued in 2001, is for a way of updating pages based on user reviews."

Xerox would like to be compensated for Google and Yahoo's alleged infringement, and also wants to bar them from using the tech again without its consent (which could probably be obtained via a licensing agreement).

Of course, Google and Yahoo aren't liable to hand Xerox a blank check.  One of Google's lawyers has already described Xerox's claims as being "without merit," and Carol Bartz isn't the type to shy from a fight.

This could turn into quite a legal battle, then, and the operation of AdSense, AdWords, Google Maps, Google Video, YouTube, the Yahoo Publisher Network, Yahoo Search Marketing, Yahoo Shopping, and the Y!Q Contextual Search tool might be affected by the outcome.

Major Companies Endorse Legal Agreement For Open Standards

Sharing open source software just got a whole lot easier.  The Open Web Foundation has announced the availability of the Open Web Foundation Agreement, and some huge corporations - namely Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo - have given the arrangement their figurative seal of approval.

It's important to note that this isn't some superfluous, feel-good pact.  Eran Hammer-Lahav, Director of Standards Development at Yahoo and President of the Open Web Foundation explained in a post on Yodel Anecdotal, "While Open Source software enjoys a wide range of licenses for making software freely available, specifications and standards are usually licensed under a complex set of rules and conditions."

He then continued, "These licenses are hard to read and spread over many pages full of terms even many lawyers don't fully understand.  There was also no suitable standalone agreement available for companies and communities to use when making their work available, forcing them into long and costly legal negotiation between the contributors."

The Open Web Foundation Agreement should address most of those problems.  It's a relatively short, relatively simple, and easily tailored document that's meant to be serve individual developers, large corporations, and everything in between.

The fact that so many important organizations support the Agreement should ensure that it actually gets some use, too, and perhaps becomes the standard it's meant to be.  Without Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, the Open Web Foundation Agreement - interesting as it is - might be forgotten within days or weeks.

But as things stand, Hammer-Lahav concluded, "This is just the first step in what we hope will be a new path for open collaboration and innovation on the web."

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