Microsoft UK has announced that it is working with newspapers to help them monetise online news content through search engines.
Search director, Stefan Weitz, has explained that one of the priorities and aims of its Search Technology Centre, based in London, will be to help publishers find a way to share content with readers via search engines, without losing money.
He went on to say that this issue is more important to Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, in the UK than in other markets: “There’s a real appetite for news here in the UK, so we’re focusing on improving that news service for both the UK and US markets. The official stance from Microsoft is that content owners deserve to be compensated and the news team is looking at ways they can help them. It’s not something I believe we’re close to at the moment, but there’s going to have to be something that helps content creators get paid, and there’s no reason it can’t be through search.”
Last month the European Commission and the US Department of Justice both approved a search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo. Commenting on this, Weitz said: “This will give a great collective forum for advertisers. We have high quality traffic and it starts to give scale.”
