Rupert Murdoch fires shot over bows of Google 'pirates'

NEWS CORP chairman Rupert Murdoch has ramped us his attacks against Google, accusing the search engine giant of being a "piracy leader" and of selling advertisements alongside illegally obtained copies of the latest Mission Impossible movie.

The 80-year-old took to Twitter, which he joined on New Year's Eve 2011, to declaim Google, whom he has long accused of "parasitical" behaviour because of how its Google News aggregator reproduces online content for free.

Murdoch started his assault by questioning President Obama's decision on Saturday to water down aspects of his online piracy legislation. "So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery", Murdoch tweeted.

He followed up with a direct allegation against Google: "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying". He then appeared to row back a bit by acknowledging: "Google great company doing many exciting things. Only one complaint, and it's important".

The search engine was quick to react to Murdoch's comments, releasing a statement to tech news website CNET. "This is just nonsense," the statement read. "Last year we took down 5 million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads... We fight pirates and counterfeiters every day."

The latest cyber salvo from Murdoch explains why his Twitter feed has become one of the social network's more popular accounts, with the News Corp boss attracting 140,000-plus followers in just over two weeks.

To date he has used his feed to support US presidential wannabe Rick Santorum, whom he likened to Ronald Reagan, and to question the amount of time that Britons take off on holiday. ·