Can you hear it? A strange maniacal and giddy laughter faintly travels on the wind. I can hear it loud and clear from my office here in Vancouver…it sounds really close. Shhhh. It sounds like it’s coming from Washington State…yes, close to Seattle. Wait, I know that twisted giddy laugh…it’s Microsoft!

A few weeks earlier here in Senses Land we mentioned how Rupert Murdoch had basically lost his mind and was considering banning Google from accessing his many newspaper’s websites- like the blood sucking freeloading leeches they are. I mean really, don’t these guys at Google have any mid 20th century business-sense? Offering a free service that directs millions of people to Rupert Murdoch’s various newspapers and websites without asking anything in return. I mean come on! Where do they get off? It should be a crime to offer such a convenient service that millions of people use. To think that people would do that rather than walk outside in the freezing cold snow or pouring rain to the nearest newspaper stand and buy a physical copy of The Wall Street Journal or sit at home waiting for something interesting and newsworthy to be “reported” on by Fox News is just shocking. And Rupert Murdoch has been shocked long enough! Here’s the plan:

Murdoch blocks Google so that millions of people can no longer see his newspaper articles through that engine, meanwhile he convinces everyone to start using Microsoft’s search engine Bing; clearly it will be the superior search engine now based on the fact that it is the only one where you can get the twisted right-winged drivel produced by Fox News and other Murdoch owned companies. So if you want what the rest of the world considers news you can still use Google and if you want what Rupert Murdoch considers to be news you can use Bing- oh and you can gall dang paying for it too (Or Microsoft can). The details of how that all works will be worked out between Microsoft and News Corp, who I predict will soon become known as News Corpse, as this kind of backwards logic will surely kill this company. Microsoft paying huge sums of money for exclusive access to what many believe is the most slanted and biased news in the world is also, in my opinion, not good for their brand or their pocket book.

I’m not the only one who thinks News Corpse is doomed. The founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, recently spoke about Murdoch’s plans at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) in London England. To use the main sound bytes, Stone said it was a “vain attempt to put the genie back in the bottle” and that it would “fail fast“. When considering how rapidly the technology and software that powers the internet changes, one can clearly see that putting a “paywall” around your content and burying it inside a search engine with a 10% market share is akin to going cyber-Amish. (Yes I am coining that term, you heard it here first. Rupert Murdoch has officially gone cyber-Amish)

That hasn’t stopped the giddy laughter from Redmond Washington though, as Microsoft has been looking for any way possible to chip away at Google’s market share of the online search industry. I’m not sure if making your search engine the only one where users can pay to get right-winged conservative news from an old man who hates the internet is the best way to go about it though.

And so begins Murdoch’s exodus into the online wilderness, welcomed and aided by another global opportunist; it will likely end poorly for the both. They have officially begun to work against the forces of internet-nature and because of this will surely be covered over by the jungle or swept away by the tide. This story is beginning to read like a Greek tragedy, where two heroes are destroyed by their own greed, ego and ambition. Blinded by their own arrogance and sense of invincibility they feel beyond censure of the gods and nature. (in this case Google and internet users)

What a swan song this will be for Rupert Murdoch.