Run, Rupert, run!

My Aussie compatriot Rupert Murdoch—infinitely richer than me, like all these self-made Waltzing-Matilda true-blue buggers—is raging. He has declared war on Google, because he thinks they're burgling news from his media empire.

As for Google, business as usual. They point out that they're merely sucking in (my verb, not Google's) Rupert's headlines and a few explanatory sentences, which they follow by a link to the original Murdoch stuff. Google is a gentleman. Be that as it may, Rupert seems to hate Google's guts, and he's threatening to do all sorts of nasty things, of a vague nature, such as specifying that his websites are out of Google grounds. "Please go ahead," reply Google. "You're free to do as you like." Personally, I don't think Google should talk like that. They're making Rupert see red. He's an aging traditionalist, and God only knows what he might do in the way of hara-kiri.