Rupert Murdoch planning a smart move

Blinkx, founded by Suranga Chandratillake, a Cambridge computer science graduate, is a multimedia search engine that indexes the web for video and audio clips and organizes them automatically into Smart Folders. Once a “smart folder” on a particular subject is created, the service will continue to compile relevant material in that folder and to update it, even when the computer is off.

Recently Blinkx introduced RSS feeds for audio and video search. So you don’t need to Google every hour for the Latest Simpsons show, Blinkx will automatically inform you as soon as it gets available over the web. Blinkx engines searches even podcasts and all audio / video formats. Google and Yahoo! seem to the main competitors of Blinkx.

According to the by The LA Times, The News Corporation controlled by Keith Rupert Murdoch is in discussions to acquire Blinkx and even Rupert has made clear that his company is eager to build its presence on the Internet. [via]

But what will be the future of desktop search that comes integrated in Blinkx ? Rupert may no longer be interested in adding new desktop search features and focus primarily on Multimedia search features. Could this deal mark the demise of the popular desktop search tool ? Only time will tell.

News Corporation would not comment on a possible deal with Blinkx. If reports pan out and News Corp. does buy the San Francisco-based Blinkx, it will be in a position to leverage the strong content of its in-house brands, including material from cable channels Fox Sports and Fox News. [via]

News Corp. this summer launched Fox Interactive Media, a new Internet division that includes all of News Corp.’s Web properties. That division has already bought sports Web site operator Scout Media for an undisclosed fee and announced a planned $580 million acquisition of Intermix Media, operator of social networking site MySpace.com, a social networking Web site boasting a hip young cadre of chatters and music bloggers. [via]