Steve Ballmer wants to beat Google. Rupert Murdoch wants his publications to make money. So they've been hatching a plan to remove the Wall Street Journal and other News Corp. properties from Google, with Microsoft paying Murdoch to give Bing exclusive access -- setting a precedent for other online publishers that would ultimately force Google to follow suit or score millions of new users for Microsoft's search engine.

That, at least, is the plan as outlined in a Financial Times story over the weekend, quoting "a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage." Neither company is commenting, so we don't know anything for sure. But based on what people seem to think they know, very few people think it's a good idea.

It's possible that Microsoft is talking to News Corp. about being a preferred partner, giving it special placement in Bing news results, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Kirkland-based Directions on Microsoft, via phone today. In a similar way, the companies already work together on the Fox Sports portal on MSN.

But from a business perspective, news coverage doesn't generate enough ad revenue in a search engine for Microsoft to pay News Corp. a lot of money for the exclusive right to index and link to its content -- or for Google to worry if it does.

The idea of Microsoft paying News Corp. to remove its properties from Google "seems really far-fetched," said Rosoff, who closely tracks Microsoft's Internet search and online initiatives. "I can't imagine how much Microsoft would pay or what that kind of deal would look like."

He's not alone in that sentiment. In a post this afternoon, Forrester analysts Sarah Rotman Epps and Shar VanBoskirk offer four reasons why the arrangement wouldn't work, at least not if structured as reported.

"Murdoch wants a deal like this to get MS to pay him for the opportunity to index his companies' content," they write. "But the tradeoff for short-term revenue could be long-term irrelevance: If consumers don’t find Newscorp results in Google searches, they’ll just click on another content source."

Experian Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer breaks down the traffic numbers to show how many readers News Corp. properties and other online publishers get from Google and Google News. Bottom line: It's a lot.

"As newspapers continue to search for a way out of the search rip current, its hard not to root for Murdoch's maverick de-index strategy, that being said, the numbers bring us back to reality," he writes. "As print continues to hemorrhage readership, could blocking your most significant traffic source be a wise choice?"