While he wasn't perfectly clear, Walter Murdoch has suggested that News Corp's news outlets will soon start actively preventing their content from getting onto Google search results.

The problem, according to Murdoch, is that news content shouldn't be free. He believes news content should never have been free online, and that no free news website will ever enjoy the margins a paid newspaper does. But when it is free for the finding on Google, it's also free for the taking, says Murdoch, and countless blogs and other websites plagiarize News Corp's content. This leads to their content being freely available in multiple locations, when it actually originated with News Corp. Even though Google's main purpose is to link to content elsewhere, Murdoch says he'd rather have fewer paying customers intentionally choosing News Corp than a greater number of Google users stumbling upon his content for free.

Is Murdoch digging his heels into a journalistic era that is no more, or is he on to something? Have we come to undervalue what we find online because it's free? Or will this move be, to plagiarize a quote from the original interview below, a classic move by a failing empire?

Further, are 20- and 30-somethings — the generation newspapers really need to start finding a way to sell something to — too used to free news to be willing to pay for it? Can Murdoch come up with a brand strategy to package this move in that will make it appealing to those he needs to appeal to most? If it works, will other news outlets take the chance to follow suit? And then, will free social media replace professional journalism? Only time will tell.

The internets, they are a-changing. Watch the full interview below: