There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate. It will play out in the next two years. We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognised online [by giving its away for free] so something needs to happen. I don’t believe the media industry can continue to exist in this way….The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it….We will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things like news bureaus in Kabul.

—Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corp, at the Monaco Media Forum on Friday, 13 November, 2009