News Corp’s CEO thinks companies like Google are nothing but leeches

News Corp’s CEO has fired the latest salvo in the long-running war of words between Google and Rupert Murdoch’s media holdings. On Thursday, Robert Thomson, the top executive of a publishing empire that includes The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, The Times of London and The Sun, took aim at the search giant’s reorganization into a holding company called Alphabet. “That Google’s newly conceived parent company is to be called Alphabet has itself created a range of delicious permutations: A is for avarice, B is for bowdlerize, through to K for kleptocracy, P for piracy and Z for zealotry,” the exec said at a journalism awards dinner in Australia. The speech by Thomson was a keynote at the Lowy Institute media awards dinner in Australia. It was first reported by media website mUmBRELLA, and Thomson’s full remarks are here and audio is embedded below. Social networks, he explained, are beginning to recognize “premium content,” but not to the benefit of media organizations. “None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, 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,” he stated.