back to article Murdoch calls for world+dog to 'expose' Google

Rupert Murdoch, the Mr Burns dotty uncle of media barondom chairman of media conglomerate News Limited, has darkly hinted that … Actually, it's pretty hard to work out what is on the mind of the Dear Leader, given that he seems to be operating his Twitter account himself, or at is dictating it stream-of-consciousness style to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Did someone mention senility?

    Not me...

  2. Gunda

    Rupert IS the sysadmin...

    and he does not know how to set robots.txt or delete tweets. So there.

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: Rupert IS the sysadmin...

      He probably knows how to delete tweets, but the idea with "Oops! Better ignore last tweet" is that you should not ignore it and he never meant it, honest. He knows about the robots.txt too but he cannot afford to disappear from Google and he would like to have some more money.

  3. Thorne

    He wants the traffic from Google but he also wants Google to pay him to give him traffic

    He's still trying to figure out how to have his cake and eat it too

    1. Cliff

      Google are invasive and a bit creepy, but given a choice between which camp to back it's them over Murdoch every time.

      At least Google planted the intent of "don't" in their "be evil" unofficial corporate motto

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        At least Google planted the intent of "don't" in their "be evil" unofficial corporate motto

        That's exactly my problem. On the one side, lies, complete BS, and an ignoring of any laws that get in the way of profit, on the other side, well, pretty much the same.

        You'd almost root for Murdoch - at least he no longer pretends. But no, I'd be happy with both of them in jail. Maybe in the same cell, with a 24/7 camera, a sort of celebrity bad brother..

        1. Cliff

          ...both of them in jail... 24/7 camera, ...celebrity bad brother...

          >>I'd be happy with both of them in jail. Maybe in the same cell, with a 24/7 camera, a sort of celebrity bad brother..

          I like it. Think of the advertising revenue opportunities.

        2. oldcoder

          Your description fits Microsoft more than Google.

          Not saying goggle hasn't made mistakes; but it really depends on which country you are in as to what is illegal.

          Google doesn't have anything in France, so how Google can violate French laws is a bit confusing.

          EU laws, on the other hand, maybe - but there are so many different venues it would be easy to violate one.

          1. Andy 66

            Re: Your description fits Microsoft more than Google.

            "Google doesn't have anything in France, so how Google can violate French laws is a bit confusing."

            So why did I see a white citroen blazened with 'Google for pros' on it in the G colours whith a rather attractive woman driving while coming home tonight?

            Google are very much present in France pushing their ad revenue stream...

  4. Aqua Marina

    robots.txt???

    Given Googles history of treating other people's IP content as an all you can eat buffet. Does this actually stop Google doing anything, or simply tell them to acquire what they want via other means less blatantly?

    1. ratfox

      Re: robots.txt???

      Google respects robots.txt, which means that it does index links to pages disallowed by the robots.txt, but never attempts to read what is in those pages. This is as far as I understand what robots.txt is supposed to do.

      What Murdoch and co would like is an intermediate settings between "rank this super low because I don't know what's inside" and "read everything on this page, and put everything on Google news, ensuring that people never bother to go read it".

      The robots.txt protocol is indeed a bit coarse, but I understand that the propositions from Google to the EU included some sort of mechanism to give websites more control over what data Google can grab and display.

      1. Evan Essence

        Re: robots.txt???

        Since The Times and The Sun are behind paywalls, who cares anyway?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: robots.txt???

          When someone tries to tell me how robots.txt works, I've found someone who has never used it.

      2. mad physicist Fiona

        Re: robots.txt???

        The robots.txt protocol is indeed a bit coarse, but I understand that the propositions from Google to the EU included some sort of mechanism to give websites more control over what data Google can grab and display.

        Arguing that this is some form of legal protection is an inversion of the law in any case. You need permission to scrape content. You don't need to put "hands off" notices all over the place but in any case there are copyright notices and terms of use for all of his sites so they are arguably already there.

        I don't know why I speaking up for Murdoch here but the law is clear - robots.txt has exactly zero legal clout.

        1. thechanklybore

          Re: robots.txt???

          I assume you're a lawyer with extensive experience of internet-related copyright issues.

          You'll easily be able to point out which law prevents publicly accessible web-pages from being scraped then?

          What's that? No you're not and no you can't. That's a surprise.

          1. mad physicist Fiona

            Re: robots.txt???

            You'll easily be able to point out which law prevents publicly accessible web-pages from being scraped then?

            You mean, like, I don't know, the Berne Convention? It's only been law for 100 years or so. The law does not change according to what you want it to say.

      3. NomNomNom

        Re: robots.txt???

        "Google respects robots.txt, which means that it does index links to pages disallowed by the robots.txt, but never attempts to read what is in those pages. This is as far as I understand what robots.txt is supposed to do."

        Well not quite. You are nearly there though, don't be disheartened, it can take a while to learn how the Web* works (although annoyingly some people like me pick it up almost instantly!)

        robots.txt is a file to help robots find their way around the Web. It basically tells them not to come into your website. If you have a sprawling website with lots of HTML Frames you will want to install a robots.txt file to keep out robots. If you don't do this your website can become full of lost robots and will slow down.

        Some robots have started adding humans.txt files to their websites in retaliation, but as robots have no legal status in law you are free to disregard their claims. Not that it'll do you much good to view a robot website anyway given it'll be written in Machine Code! (which is impossible for humans to understand, although experts such as myself have ways...)

        *Web is shorthand for World Wide Web

        -(Bio) NomNomNom is a Visionary Software Tool. A Web Netizen for eight successful years, having graduated from school with a GCSE in IT. He is currently developing Software that will allow ideas to be embedded in URLs. Agile.

        1. David Haworth 1

          Re: robots.txt???

          And there I was thinking that robots.txt was just a Project Gutenberg e-text of a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov.

          Silly me.

  5. Shugyosha
    Pint

    'What exactly was Rupert thinking?'

    'What exactly was Rupert drinking?' is probably the more pertinent question.

    1. hplasm
      Pirate

      Re: 'What exactly was Rupert drinking?'

      Whatever it was, it needs more hemlock. This, with crossbones --->

      1. Euripides Pants

        Re: 'What exactly was Rupert drinking?'

        Acetone?

    2. Ralph B

      Re: 'What exactly was Rupert thinking?'

      Dark thoughts, as ever.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Diversionary Tactics

    What have *you* got to hide Rupert?

  7. jake Silver badge

    Regardless of potential senility (I am not a doctor, and this is not a diagnosis) ...

    ... he's right. google is evil and should be shunned.

  8. WhoaWhoa

    Doesn't robots.txt request Google to display a message saying that a site hasn't been indexed, and then index it anyway?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, exactly. It has to index it so it isn't to be indexed :-/. The robot file is a bunch of bullshit. Anyone telling you it works has obviously never dealt with it.

      1. Crazy Operations Guy
        WTF?

        "Anyone telling you it works has obviously never dealt with it."

        So what you are telling us is that you've never dealt with a robots.txt file then.

        A properly behaving robot will request the robots.txt before requesting anything else, it will then process the directives in the file. After that, assuming the robot isn't blocked, should proceed to default document while respecting any directives it was given by robots.txt. It should also never index the robots.txt file and discard anything it retrieved from it upon completing indexing of the website. The file is small and can easily change, so there is no reason to index it or even keep a copy of it around.

        From my years as a web server admin, I know that all the major search engines actually do this.

  9. Wanda Lust

    Unattended octagenarian

    Sad old codger, Wend's gone and his nursemaid must've left the room. Probably dribbling as well as twitter tweeting.

  10. HMB

    Android

    It's because he's got an Android phone, clearly. He's gotten all into the fancy (and rather pretty) Ice Cream Sandwich user interface restyle, then been upset by the music app now being white and orange.

    It's a move as popular as the one to drop decades old national road colour schemes and turn all roads in Google maps either white or a shade of orange. Yay!

    Google - Making software we all love, then destroying it slowly with annoying updates.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

    ..."Remember, everyone innocent until proven guilty, entitled to fair trial in most countries."

    Sadly not applicable in any of the countries where he publishes ...

    1. Kris Akabusi

      Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

      I was thinking the same thing, early 90's every week there would be a headline in the sun proclaiming someone to be a dangerous paedophile.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

        Like in the UK right now. Every man is a pedophile until proven otherwise, and even then he might still be a pedophile.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

          "Like in the UK right now. Every man is a pedophile until proven otherwise, and even then he might still be a pedophile."

          What is that? Someone who likes bicycles?

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

            Have you forgotten

            that in certain places 'liking' bicycles is a big no no and will get you on the register and in The Register

            1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
              Coffee/keyboard

              Re: Have you forgotten

              'liking' bicycles is a big no no

              LOL. Monday morning hasn't even finished yet and I can go wash my keyboard :)

          3. PJI
            Headmaster

            Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

            Close, someone who likes feet. Well, I hear that there are people with a foot fetish. At least the writer did not write, "peedofeel".

            Another point in these posts: why have English media and "contributors" reverted to pre-Shakespearean "gotten" and "proven" (apart from in Scottish, archaic legal terminology)? I suspect that even grammatically, it is being used wrongly and indiscriminately. Do the yoof or meeja suddenly think it's cool?

            I look forward to the (correct) use of "thee", "thy", "thine", "thou" and so on, along with archaic subjunctive forms. Next we can change spellings and reintroduce the old letters representing "th", the extra "s" that looks almost like an "f" and so on. Of course, we will be reverting to a language that even Elizabethans were starting to consider to be archaic or dialect, or to the deliberate separatism practised by some extreme religious groups, particularly those who emigrated to the new American colonies. I've just been reading a book by an 18th century seaman: there were none of these archaisms in his writing (and for that matter, his spelling was pretty much as in modern British English, with just a few "vallies" and so on).

            Just read any English writing from even just a couple of years ago, probably just from last year and you will see no "gotten" except in take-offs of Southern USA speech, likewise that abomination, "gonna", that actually almost no one speaking non-USA English actually says even if they think they do. I suppose the users also go to the "bathroom" in a pub even when all they want to do is piss and, one hopes, wash their hands (heard someone talk about the bathroom when walking in the woods and excusing himself recently).

            I know recent reports note the greatly reduced literacy of those under 24; but surely people in these forums pretend to be a little bit literate. Who says the effects of foreign films etc. are negligible?

            1. Santa from Exeter
              Headmaster

              Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

              'I look forward to the (correct) use of "thee", "thy", "thine", "thou" and so on, along with archaic subjunctive forms.'

              I would include in this the correct use of the 'your' archaic form, just for completeness of course :-)

            2. Hollerith 1

              Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

              Bring back the yod! We need our Anglo-Saxon alphabet!

          4. Jonathan Richards 1
            Go

            Bike likers

            Alas, thou art Anonymous, and I may not forward thee an invitation to join the Society for the Re-introduction of the Diphthong (which now that the tyranny of ASCII recedeth, mayhap have a glimmer of success). Wikipædia, thy turn will come!

            1. Kubla Cant
              Headmaster

              Re: Bike likers

              It's not the diphthong that ASCII threatens, it's the ligature; "ae" replaces "æ". To be fair, the death of the ligature is old news; even in the days of hot metal, many fonts, and many more compositors, didn't support ligatures. Strictly, neither "ae" or "æ" is a diphthong, which consists of consecutive vowels with distinct sounds (exhaustive information here).

              The "ae" combination seems to have been on the way out for some time, anyway: "mediæval" is now mostly "medieval", even among a population as reactionary as medievalists, and I don't think "pedagogue" has been "pædagogue" in living memory.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

          "Like in the UK right now. Every man is a pedophile until proven otherwise, and even then he might still be a pedophile."

          And heaven help him if his name just happens to be Peter File!

        3. Crisp

          Re: Every man is a pedophile until proven otherwise

          So sayeth the Pedo-Finder General!

        4. mIRCat
          Pint

          Re: there's a quote about motes and beams .. If only I could remember ,,,

          "Like in the UK right now."

          On second thought, let's not go there. 'Tis a silly place.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wait...what? Did the guy who owns the Sun tweet about people being innocent until proven guilty? ....I'll just leave this here http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/jul/29/sun-daily-mirror-guilty-contempt

  13. Dr. Bobalicous

    Yet uses Google to his Advantage...

    The Sun's pay wall "SUN+" detects if you're google via the User Agent and then gives you free access past their pay wall to allow Google to index their content.

    This would actually be against Googles T&C's and they should be using the "First Click Free" system; if it were a smaller independent news site, they'd be penalised and thrown off Google's SERPs for such methods.

    1. Jonathan Richards 1

      Re: Yet uses Google to his Advantage...

      Really? So I could go and check my website logs, determine the GoogleBot's user agent string, and then set up a browser to hop over The Sun's paywall? I'd do it for fun, only I'm damn sure I wouldn't find anything on the other side that makes it worth the effort.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yet uses Google to his Advantage...

        Well, you'd find all the Page 3 girls behind the paywall... so I've heard.

        (Yes it does seem like a lot of effort when Google Images can show you a lot more for free)

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ha ha ha ha haah hah haaa

    "Big media trials in London in 2 weeks. Remember, everyone innocent until proven guilty, entitled to fair trial in most countries."

    Ha ha h ahaaaaaa ha haaa....

    For one minute, I thought the trial by media slime bag bag that the world would be better off without (I tend not to want people to die, but this I withold on this piece of low life shit) was serious...

    Wait! What? He Is?

    1. Rol

      Re: Ha ha ha ha haah hah haaa

      More like "One man and His Dog"

      Sheep dog trials, where only the dog gets blamed for biting sheep while the owner responsible insists he whistled "cum bah" not "sic him"

  15. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    A classic move

    It's the oldest trick in the game - "We won't be talking about what so-and-so did with such-and-such the last weekend, hehe! Oh! Did I just say that? Silly me, never mind me old fool! Just forget all about that..."

    This will, of course, guarantee that everyone will be talking solely about what so-and-so did with such-and-such the last weekend and eventually, even if the poor sods never actually did anything, it will remain in the collective memory that, of course, they did, the rascals!

  16. Crisp

    I'd ask the world and his dog for dirt on Rupert Murdoch

    But everyone already knows the kind of nefarious stuff his organisation gets up to.

  17. Arachnoid

    Maybe its his memory thats fading

    Trial by media seems to be his favorite editorial stance

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Maybe its his memory thats fading

      Shame its not his mammary. The man is a tit.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    He's spreading FUD

    Because the moment one of his (ex)employees goes down for bribery and corruption he'll be facing a stiff jail sentence in the US under the FCPA.

    Luckily all this Twittering won't save him!

  19. James 100

    Illegal snooping

    He might have a bit of a point, given Google being caught illegally snooping on people's electronic communications recently - they do seem to have been getting off far too lightly with that, as the extent of their antics slowly becomes known.

    It's disappointing to me they seem to have focussed more on the reporters illegally buying information, rather than the police illegally selling it to them: both crimes, but IMO the latter is the worse. Selling drugs is much more serious than buying them, the police breaking the law is much more serious than 'ordinary' people doing so.

    None of that's a defence, of course: if you break the law and point out someone else committed a bigger crime, the correct answer is to prosecute both. Jail the bent journalists, their police sources, and whoever at Google thought it was OK to go poking around everybody's WiFi network and harvesting all the data.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Illegal snooping

      As for "Google being caught illegally snooping on people's electronic communications recently" got any links or evidence to back that up?

      Or is this:

      (a) another re-hash of the ridiculously overhyped unencrypted wi-fi street map *kerfuffle*.?

      (b) another of Snowdens accusations by PowerPoint(tm)?

      (c) some genuine news that I missed?

      (d) you spouting

  20. Hans 1

    >why can't his myriad sysadmins write a robots.txt file?

    Windows admins are scared of text files, don't know where to click ...

  21. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    Hey Rupe

    It's innocent unless proven guilty. Except with your minions, until is probably more accurate.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wasn't he due for Renewal via Carrousel

    Like 100 years ago?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just to clarify...

    He got a message in response to his tweet, asking him to expose Googles antics during the courtcase, effective using it as a soapbox.

    Unfortunately, he screwed up the reply and tweeted it, partly exposing the defense strategy.

    Just in case you wondered : he's not going to cop to it and do a mea culpa. But you knew this, of course.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thanks Rupe

    I'd almost forgotten that former Number 10 spindoctor and flame-haired editoratrix (your favourite person in the whole wide world) were on trial for corruption whilst working for your company.

    I do hope there will be lots and lots of coverage in the media.

    All of the media.

    Including your bit - if you can squeeze it in between the tits.

  25. Rampant Spaniel

    Sounds like Eric changed the pin on his voice mail and the emperor is pissed. Why can't that reptilian scum just do a Maxwell and give us some peace.

    1. John G Imrie

      I don't want him to do a Maxwell

      I want him to live a very long time ... In Jail ... sharing a cell with Mr Coulshore ... knowing it was Mrs Brooks' inability to keep her trap shut that put him there.

      1. The FunkeyGibbon
        Joke

        Re: I don't want him to do a Maxwell

        Andy Coulson is going to get John Culshaw to impersonate him and do his time under then name Mr Coulshore? The devious bugger!

        1. John G Imrie

          Re: I don't want him to do a Maxwell

          Dam I admit it; I am Mupert Rurdoch :-)

  26. The Axe

    Actually he's very "with-it"

    What's the point in deleting a tweet when everyone has seen it and screen grabbed it.

  27. Chika
    FAIL

    Spitting Chunks

    Why is it that I suddenly imagined Wupert doing toast as shown many years ago during his tenure in the street of shame... er... Wapping... as portrayed in Spitting Image?

    This corporate toad has little room to criticise others, especially not other corporate toads.

  28. Vociferous

    Well, if anyone knows evil...

    ...it's certainly the Prince of Lies himself.

  29. The FunkeyGibbon

    Anyway...

    It's not as if anybody in Murdoch's empire has ever cynically deleted voicemails on a phone of a dead girl thus making her parents think she is alive, is it? After all that would be really evil, no?

    1. El Presidente

      Re: Anyway...

      @ The FunkeyGibbon

      There's no evidence that happened but the suggestion that it did allowed the Graun's agenda to gain traction in the conciousness of the UK populace. The rest, as they say, is history.

      Whatever the truth that probable myth is stuck in the public's mind as evidenced by your statement.

      1. theblackhand

        Re: Anyway...

        El Presidente - here's the Guardians article:

        http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world

        You have to go to the end to find:

        "• The following was published on 12 December 2011 in the corrections and clarifications column: An article about the investigation into the abduction and death of Milly Dowler (News of the World hacked Milly Dowler's phone during police hunt, 5 July, page 1) stated that voicemail "messages were deleted by [NoW] journalists in the first few days after Milly's disappearance in order to free up space for more messages. As a result friends and relatives of Milly concluded wrongly that she might still be alive." Since this story was published new evidence – as reported in the Guardian of 10 December – has led the Metropolitan police to believe that this was unlikely to have been correct and that while the News of the World hacked Milly Dowler's phone the newspaper is unlikely to have been responsible for the deletion of a set of voicemails from the phone that caused her parents to have false hopes that she was alive, according to a Metropolitan police statement made to the Leveson inquiry on 12 December."

  30. This post has been deleted by its author

  31. FuzzyTheBear
    Happy

    Have we just all been insulted ?

    Isn't commentard used to describe clueless people making uninformed comments on stuff they know nothing about ?

    Like me ? lol

  32. Ant Evans

    Twitter Quality

    For twitter, this is above average.

  33. and-job

    Got to hand it to Fluck & Law

    They got Murdochs character down to a T! He is exactly how spitting image portrayed him, in fact much worse! LOL

    We really need a full World and it's dog expose on News Corp. Start with them and see where the extent of the corruption actually is within this abomination of a company.

    Something that I was always told as a kid was that if an apple is bad at its surface it is bad all the way through to its core and I bet that the phone hacking, corruption and bribing didn't stop with just the newspapers in the UK.

  34. ukgnome

    Dear El Reg

    Please don't draw peoples attention to this claw fisted cock juggler.....

    *Dear lawyers, you will note that I haven't actually mentioned which one....Oops (that should work)

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