Murdoch to Yahoo, MSN: 'We don't need you'

Rupert Murdoch has defended his strategy of not making News Corp content available to portals.

He told New York investors on Tuesday that he didn't need links from the likes of Yahoo and MSN news, saying: "We're not sure the portal model is the way of the future at all. We think people are going straight to the sites."

Melbourne's 75-year-old Dark Prince went on to indicate he doesn't believe linking between his own sites is necessary either. He said: "I don't think you have to say you have to go to Fox online to find The Times online."

It also emerged Murdoch has dispatched his third wife and former employee of his Hong Kong Star TV outfit, Xuzhou-born Wendi Deng to China. She is having talks on how to unleash the phenomenon on the world's largest society. He said: "We have to make MySpace a very Chinese site. I have sent my wife across there because she understands the language."

The plan is to try and avoid the "heavy weather" of political and publicity firestorms Google and Yahoo's early forays into the tightly-controlled internet business in China have attracted, The Financial Times reports.

News Corp would outsource MySpace China's support services to local partners, handing over slices of ownership, but will hang on to 50 per cent. ®