Google Dismisses Murdoch’s Piracy Allegation Tweets

Rupert Murdoch, recently arrived on Twitter, has tweeted a broadside against Google, which the search giant has dismissed as “nonsense”.

The News Corporation boss tweeted that Google is a “piracy leader ” which “streams movies free” and “sells ads around them”, during the weekend. Google’s response is a statement dismissing Murdoch’s claims as “nonsense”.

Does Murdoch understand the Web?

Murdoch’s specific complaint was that a Google search for Mission Impossible, returned results including sites offering “free links”. Tweeting this, he said, “I rest my case.”

Murdoch has been a vocal supporter of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), a proposal which critics say would amount to Internet censorship on behalf of copyright holders.  SOPA has faced increasing criticism, and at the weekend was criticised by the White House.

A Google spokesman said: “This is just nonsense. Last year we took down five million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million (£39m) in the fight against bad ads.”

“Murdoch doesn’t understand links,” tweeted commentator Glyn Moody, adding that Murdoch is against the “fundamental structure of the web”.