Google/News Corp spat intensifies with 'Dear Rupert' open letter
The very public row between Google and publisher News Corp has shown no sign of abating as the search company published a “Dear Rupert” letter online.
The letter follows a previous statement in which Google mocked the News Corp complaint, which led to Rupert Murdoch posing in this pastiche of a Sun front page.
The Google statement is in the form of a point by point rebuttal of the points made by News Corp's European chief executive, Robert Thomson in his submission to the EU and deals with his assertions over issues such as online piracy, algorithm changes and YouTube.
In the complaint Thomson accused the search giant of being a “platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks,” and “a company that boasts about its ability to track traffic [but] chooses to ignore the unlawful and unsavory content that surfaces after the simplest of searches.”
Google responded arguing that it has done more than almost any other company to help tackle online piracy noting that it had removed 222 million web pages from its index due to copyright infringement and frequently downgraded websites that regularly violate copyright in their search rankings.
The California-based company also responded to claims it was “stifling competition” by saying: “With the Internet, people enjoy greater choice than ever before -- and because the competition is just one click away online, barriers to switching are very, very low. Google is of course very popular in Europe, but we are not the gatekeeper to the web, as some claim.”
The final answer from Google is perhaps the sharpest one, in response to Thomson’s claim that the company’s actions might lead to “the intemperate trends we are already seeing in much of Europe to proliferate."
The open letter replied: “People probably have enough evidence to judge that one for themselves :)” linking to the above classic Sun front page.
Speaking to the Drum a spokesperson for News Corp said: “We will let Mr Thomson’s letter speak for itself.”
The full Google blog post can be found here.