News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch could resort to suing Google if discussions over a potential paid-content deal fall through, according to New York magazine.
A lengthy profile piece on Murdoch referred to a "senior media executive who recently conferred with Murdoch".
"He is pretty tightly wound up over Google and has been ready to sue them," the executive was quoted as saying. "He doesn't trust them at all."
It is believed that Murdoch has hired former AOL chief executive Jonathan Miller to work with his son James to create an online pay model for all News titles, as well as negotiating a deal with Google.
It is also thought that News could be in talks with Microsoft to sign an exclusive content distribution deal with the software company's search engine Bing.
Murdoch believed that search engines should pay to deliver News' content in their search listings.
He argued in an interview with Sky News last November that News had " sleepwalked" into letting people get news content for free and accused Google and others of stealing his content.
He also played down the value of any advertising revenue that the occasional visitors coming to his sites from search engines and news aggregators would bring.
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