Everyone knows it’s not just Rupert who is getting fed up with trying to deal with the competitive menace of Google. An oldie of the media business is apparently in the early stages of talks with an oldie of the tech industry to try and combat the young upstart search engine. The FT reports:

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry…

But will that be enough? What about attempting to deploy overwhelming force.

…the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

All of which looks like a concerted effort by Microsoft to go gangbusters in any assault on Google. No-one want’s to be on the losing side of what is likely to be a multi-billion dollar battle.

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