In a move to encourage people to pay for online content, mega-publisher Rupert Murdoch says he will pull stories from appearing on Google’s news.

Murdoch (for years) has criticized aggregators such as Google for taking a free ride on its content arguing that it disminishes the value to advertisers.

Murdoch was asked why he didn’t simply pull his papers’ stories from Google News and replied:

“I think we will, but that’s when we start charging [for online content]. We have it [charging] already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story – but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form.”

Of course he could also just add a line to the sites robot.txt files which will block google from indexing his conent in their news search index.

Murdoch has recently been strongly critical of Google, calling them “keptomaniac” and “parasitical” for including News Corp content in Google News pages.

“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them,” he said. “That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people … they shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”

“I think we will [block Google indexing], but that’s when we start charging,” he continued. “We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story – but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form.”

Murdoch Needs To Get With The Times

The fact of the matter is, search indexes haven’t been “stealing” from traditional newspaper sites like the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times,: they’ve been giving them traffic and paying their bills.

Murdoch Wants His Sites Off Google News