News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch is no longer standing alone in the wind as he rails against the unpaid aggregation of content by search engine giant Google, Bloomberg reported yesterday. Publishers A.H. Belo and MediaNews Group may soon shield their content with paywalls, and de-index that paid content from search engines, Editor & Publisher reported.

Publishers resent Google because it does not share with them the money it makes from advertisements displayed next to news search results, Reuters said yesterday. Murdoch's ire goes one step further, seeking direct compensation from search engines for access to News Corp.'s articles, BBC reported yesterday.

The contemplated pullout entails severe risk of invisibility for the publications at issue, MediaBuyerPlanner yesterday observed. Currently, Google enjoys 65 percent of the U.S. search market, leaving Microsoft's Bing only 9.9 percent.

That balance could tip, though, if Bing pays enough cash-starved publishers for exclusivity. In any event, readers' reaction to Murdoch's hide-and-pay plan appears unfavorable so far, according to a roundup of online comments by AdAge.

MediaNews Group will begin blocking Google News next year when its newspapers, which include the Denver Post, put up paywalls. Belo is also considering a similar move, according to Bloomberg.