kaled - 4:32 pm on Nov 24, 2009 (gmt 0)  If Microsoft and News
Corp go ahead with this they will be shooting themselves in the
foot. They will be portrayed as the nasty big bullies (and they
are) trying to crush the small guy.  Nonsense - Google is hardly
the "small guy".  Also, there are no restraint-of-trade issues
here. All content providers, be they news media or others, are
free monetize their sites by whatever means they choose (without
breaking criminal laws) and if that means entering into
exclusivity deals with search engines then that's fine from a
legal point of view unless specific legislation is enacted in
the future that says otherwise.  In terms of monopolistic
activity, deals such as these would barely even rate 1 point out
of 10. It's like a free-to-air TV channel buying exclusive
access to a TV show (which happens all the time). All the viewer
has to do is change channel - big deal.  Provided Microsoft
offers enough money to the website owners to compensate them for
loss of earnings due to l