Mr. Murdoch is getting into the game that had three major players: Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. As an article in NYT says:
Mr. Murdoch has been particularly concerned about younger audiences spending less time reading newspapers and watching television, while spending more time online and embracing such features as interactivity and virtual communities.
Both Mr. Chernin and Mr. Murdoch are now spending much of their time on Internet strategy, though the Internet represented a small fraction of the company’s $23.8 billion in annual revenues last year. Having made his career by taking on established players, Mr. Murdoch enjoys the disruptive nature of the Internet, News Corporation executives say.
Diller bought Ask Jeeves, Time Warner has been in this space, and Comcast has been talking about entering the space. All these suggest that the nature of media is really changing and finally the so called digital convergence is really here. Murdoch’s serious intent in this space is something that the current Internet players will be seriously watching, I believe.