As Murdoch Takes Aim, Google Isn’t Blinking

If Rupert Murdoch had his sights squarely trained on you, and issued a call to arms across the far corners of his media empire, most of the sane among us would run for the hills. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, but Josh Cohen, the business manager in charge of Google News—the source of much of Murdoch’s recent ire—isn’t sweating the threat all that much.

Cohen stopped by the Big Think offices today to discuss, among other things, Murdoch’s recent fatwa against Google News and other aggregators, what algorithms can accomplish that editors can’t, and what the media landscape might look like in 2025. He even offered some sage advice for Murdoch: not even all the money in Australia is enough to resist the forces of change Murdoch has aligned himself against, so it might be time to rethink his game plan…