Originally Posted by Atticus

It's really a brilliant idea if he can influence a few other media companies to follow suit. Microsoft needs an edge to gain market share from Google. By paying News Corp for exclusive search access to their content, Microsoft is now giving users a legitimate reason to switch search engines. Google in turn realizes this and could set off a bidding war for News Corp access (as well as other media companies content) and give these news/entertainment sites much needed additional revenue.