In a speech at the Lowy Institute Media awards in Sydney, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson blasted Google for greed, censorship, corruption, and piracy, mUmBRELLA reports.
Thomson accused “distributionists” like Google and Facebook of setting up a broken system.
“None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it,” he said. “But they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act.”
Thomson believes these companies are helping themselves to the content that others create, “co-opting and corralling audiences and consciously devaluing brands.” He contended that the words “Intellectual Property” don’t appear in Google’s alphabet, a reference to Google’s new operating structure of the same name.
He went on to riff more on Alphabet: “A is for Avarice, B is for Bowdlerize, through to K for Kleptocracy, P for Piracy and Z for Zealotry.”
Thomson cautioned that without a fair payment model in place, “well-resourced reporting will be ever more challenged.”
He also threw a barb at LinkedIn, calling it a “pretender” that is chock full of spam.
Business Insider has reached out to Google for comment and will update this post when we hear back.
