Murdoch: Google is “the greatest company in the World” & Icahn’s Proxy Bid for Yahoo will Fail

In a report by Fortune magazine, News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch predicted Wednesday that Carl Icahn’s proxy fight for control of Yahoo will fail, but it will “make him a few hundred million dollars.”

Murdoch also said that at one point, Yahoo and his company tried to work out their own deal. He said the two companies talked about adding MySpace, News Corp.’s social network, to Yahoo’s portal. But it never came to fruition, he said.

Even without the Yahoo deal, Murdoch said News Corp.’s Internet advertising revenues haven’t suffered. He said News Corp. is likely to pass $1 billion in revenues within the next three to four years. What gives him optimism is “we have some big advertisers come in over the last few months,” among other developments, he said.

Murdock then called Google “the greatest company in the world,” and the reason why Microsoft is worried. “They see the danger of Google turning on them,” he said. “Yahoo has a hard job ahead to just holding onto their” search market share.

Murdoch predicted that many newspapers have a limited future, perhaps as little as 30 years as readers and advertisers are turning to the Internet.

What will be left are major national papers, like The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, while the traditional local daily will become Internet-only, he said.