Microsoft Corp has had discussion with News Corp about a tie up, which would involve News Corp getting paid to take its news websites off Google Inc, a source common with the matter said on Sunday.

News Corp, which owns such papers as the Wall Street Journal and the Sun, started the discussions, which were at the beginning stage, the source said.

Microsoft has also talked with other online publishers regarding removing their sites from Google, according to the Financial Times, which initially reported the development.

Google and other Web portals say they are within their legal rights to post scraps of news stories, which help point traffic to news sites.

Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman, said Google has a "clear policy of respecting the wish of content owners" by allowing them to avoid their material from showing up in Google search results, though he declined to mention directly on the talks between Microsoft and News Corp.

"We believe search engines are of genuine benefit to newspapers, driving precious traffic to their Web sites and connecting them with new readers around the world," Mr. Stricker said.

Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. in July announced a search-engine partnership that is meant to offer a superior competitor to Google in the search market. Under the agreement, Yahoo would set Microsoft’s new Bing search engine on its Web sites and split the associated advertising revenue.

The talks between the parties have built-in a possible plan to "delist" News Corp. stories from Google's immense search index, which means they wouldn't appear in search results on Google's site. Any Web site can stop Google from indexing their site by including special commands in their Web pages.

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