Although a few months have passed since the last big flareup, News Corp. may still be willing to go to war with Google.  A fresh report indicates that Rupert Murdoch is indeed prepared to take the search giant to court, and has been talking to Microsoft about an exclusive deal, too.

Gabriel Sherman recently published a long profile of Murdoch for New York magazine, and within the profile, quoted someone he described as "a senior media executive."  This person said with regards to the CEO and chairman of News Corp., "He’s pretty tightly wound up over Google and has been ready to sue them.  He doesn’t trust them at all."

Then there was another interesting tidbit: apparently the Chief Digital Officer of News Corp., Jonathan Miller, "has also been in talks with Microsoft about possibly pulling all of News Corp.’s content from Google and signing an exclusive distribution deal with Bing."

Unfortunately, potential timetables weren’t outlined; there’s no telling whether Murdoch is willing to spend years negotiating with Google, or if he’ll unleash the lawyers next week.

Still, it sounds like Murdoch’s statements about blocking Google weren’t just so much bluster or a bluff.  A showdown over whether or not online news should be free remains possible.

Real-time search – along with Twitter’s bank account – may be about to receive a couple of big boosts.  A new report indicates that both Google and Microsoft are interested in obtaining access to all of the info Twitter can serve up. 

Kara Swisher wrote earlier this morning, "Twitter is in advanced talks . . . about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines."

This seems like a rather natural move considering that, earlier this month, Google began to let searchers limit their results to content less than one hour old.  What’s more, about four months ago, Bing started showing certain celebrities’ recent tweets when people searched for their names in conjunction with the word "Twitter."

Then here’s an important note relating to the business side of things: any deals would be non-exclusive, which on the one hand precludes a bidding war and definite win for one search engine.  On the other, it leaves Twitter free to receive money from both sides.  Plus Yahoo could jump in at some point.

Don’t bet your iPhone on anything getting accomplished even where Google and Microsoft are concerned, however.  Swisher wrote, "Sources said it is also possible that no agreement would be reached with either company."

It may be that the exit of Kai-Fu Lee won’t act so much as a stumbling block as a catalyst for Google China.  A new report indicates that, following his departure, Google China will double its sales staff and offer cash incentives to 1,000 would-be advertisers.

Figures related to the employees remain unknown.  Otherwise, Zhu Shenshen wrote in a Shanghai Daily article, "Under the 50 million yuan incentive program, Google will provide 500 yuan to every new registered customer of Adwards [sic], its popular online search advertising tool."

Those amounts convert to about $7.3 million and $73, respectively, in case you were wondering.

Google seems to be quite serious about getting Chinese advertisers to embrace its AdWords program, then.  While the company’s not giving away tons of cash in the grand scheme of things (Google’s current market cap: $149.5 billion), the fact that it would offer so much money to so many advertisers is undeniably significant.

Looking ahead, it’s easy to guess that Google feels the 1,000 advertisers might represent a sort of tipping point, too, after which others will glob on in an attempt to catch up.

We (along, no doubt, with many analysts and Baidu executives) will keep an eye on the initiative to see how things progress.

Google’s associate general counsel for products and intellectual property is leaving the corporation.  A report indicates that Alexander Macgillivray will now put his legal skills to work for Twitter as its general counsel.

Macgillivray has an impressive resume.  He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and spent a good deal of time at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a law firm that’s represented major clients including Creative Commons, HP, and McAfee.  Macgillivray’s stint at Google lasted a noteworthy six years, too. 

Then there’s his network to consider.  Jeff Eddings, Rick Klau, and Hunter Walk – a senior business development manager, a business product manager, and a director of product management at Google, respectively – wished Macgillivray well in the comments section of his "leaving Google" blog post.  As did Matt Cutts.

So Twitter seems to have obtained a smart and well-connected man.

Here’s one other bit of interesting news about Twitter’s hiring habits: Michael Arrington writes that he’s "confirmed that Twitter is aggressively hiring across the board, including top executive spots.  A number of candidates have been interviewed for the CFO job in particular."

The company may be drawing near to the point at which it’ll seriously try to make money, then.