commanderW - 5:31 am on Nov 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

I just went and checked Google news. I don't get what Murdoch finds objectionable. There is the headline, and the first paragraph. This is that introductory 'who, what, where, when' paragraph that they teach you to write in journalism classes. The entire purpose of this paragraph is for just exactly what Google is using it for. To tell the prospective reader what the news story is going to be about. Every site that links to news stories should take such trouble ! This helps the surfer decide whether it's worth it to click on the link and wait for the code and script bloated corporate news landing page to load. If news junkies could only find out exactly what the story is about by clicking on blind links (meaning 2-5 word summaries) instead of the actual headline and introductory paragraph, they would very quickly suffer that extreme and absolutely stultifying mental fatigue we have all come to know so well. Maybe Murdoch doesn't know about it. How much time does he spend on the Net (and does he use Google?:).

Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe he is the webmaster of his sites. Maybe he doesn't want his potential readers to know the 'who, what, when' of his stories ahead of time. A webmaster who's gone over to the dark side and thinks he can trap his readers like flies on a labrynthine landing page which forces them to click madly on ad after ad as they desperately try to figure out which link is actually to a news story. In which case, he should really consider opening up an adsense account for his sites.