The Google News Dilemma

(54)T-Dub writes "Wired has an interesting article about the status of news.google.com. It has been 3 years since its release and the major bugs have long since been ironed out, so why is it still in beta? Apparently, it's because Google hasn't been able to figure out how to make money off of it. Slapping up some Google Adwords seems like the obvious solution. The problem is that Google News has multi-million-dollar news publishers scared because of the incredibly low-cost method that Google has employed to bring us 'up the minute news.' Currently they are able to scrape the content of news sites under fair use because they are not using it for commercial purposes. Once they move away from the nonprofit, educational purposes of their system they can expect to be deluged by cease and desist orders. Before you break out the tissue box though, remember that google sent their own cease and desist orders to a Google News RSS feeder a few months back."

Comments

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

One major bug still exists -- the bot cannot separate news from opinion and other trash. It's a sloppy orgy of miscellaneous content that should somehow be more carefully organized before being released.

Re:I disagree

[LS]

Hmm, you sound like a troll. All news sources are more or less biased in one direction or another, even if simply by ommitting information. "Opinion" pieces are simply news articles that pass some arbitrary threshold of bias.

LS

Re:I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

One major bug still exists -- the bot cannot separate news from opinion and other trash. It's a sloppy orgy of miscellaneous content that should somehow be more carefully organized before being released.


Neither can CBS, FOX, CNN, NPR ...

Re:I disagree

[Mad_Rain]

One major bug still exists -- the bot cannot separate news from opinion and other trash.

As soon as most people can separate opinion from "the news", I'll start complaining about not having a bot that can do it. Until then, news.google.com is doing pretty damn well (It's the homepage on most of the computers I use).

Re:I disagree

[LS]

Actually, I would defnitely agree that there is potential for bias in the optic nerve (or more precisely the visual cortex). Flocks of ducks are often mistaken for a fleet of UFOs at sunset. The brain biases information to what it wants to see when presented with limited information.

And you are correct: There are no facts. Everything is subject to human interpretation (unless you are somehow one with the universe and are aware of some facts without them being filtered through your or someone elses brain first).

I understand your point that the intent of the item determines whether it is news (providing "facts" vs. explicit "opinions"). The problem is that the intent doesn't change the actual content. Watch Fox News for instance - opinion pieces are passed off as news items daily. Virtually every major news entity is backed by a large corporation which filters and adjusts its reporting to align with its interests. The viewer may see something that looks like a news report, but in fact is an ad, an opinion piece, or a suggestion that adjusts the viewer's perspective.

Even a formally journalist trained with no axe to grind (say he's writing for a time capsule) can't help to be biased - he can only report what is available to his senses and can be communicated with his language - and we all know how language contains MANY inherent biases.

LS

Google web-scrapes the latest news

[stratjakt]

Then threatens to sue anyone who web-scrapes them.

Oh, but one guy said something warm and fuzzy once about "do no harm" so they're a Good(tm) giant, soulless corporation, like Apple or IBM.

Oh, and thanks for GMail. ABSOLUTE GENIOUS. I was searching high and low for a way to introduce more advertisements into my e-mail, and Google delivered.

Re:Bad Grammar...?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a play on "betta not make money" or "better not make money"

Their return is in the branding

[stomv]

So what if Google News doesn't make money? If it's another great product by Google (tm?), then it still reinforces the idea that google does great things.

The financial return from the news portion doesn't have to come in dollars. It can simply come from "good will" and "brand value." Those are items that show up on the balance sheet too.

[rumor]Perhaps google will buy out a news entity in the future[/started]

Still in beta because...

[Lifix]

Google news is still in beta because it can't differentiate between real news and editorials. As much as I like google news, I get most of my news from rss feeds (slashdot/scifiwire ect...) As far as I am concerned, Google needs to either decide to stay nonprofit with the google news, OR pay out the cash and sell adds.

Now that I reread this, it's gonna get modded down... oh well. :)

Don't underestimate Google...

[Hobbex]

Obviously there is a plan here, and it is very simple. Google are simply going to let the service run as beta, until it has enough users (and it is getting there) that the shoe is on the other foot: and the news providers will WANT to be screen scraped.

I mean, when news pages start seeing that 90% of their article reads are referred from news.google.com, or that do reader research and find that Google News is the number one way that people learn to read their site, then Google can start gladly removing anybody who asks. I have started reading several newssites regularly that I first found via Google News.

So?

[chrisgeleven]

I don't understand why news sites would have an issue with Google News.

Think about it...

1) Google isn't copying the full-text of an article. At most, its the headline and a paragraph...most of the time it is the headline and a sentence.

2) Since Google doesn't post the entire article, you have to click a link that takes you directly to the publisher of the article. Google News is therefor generating millions of direct hits per month to various news sites.

3) These millions of direct hits to these news sites means more advertising dollars for THOSE sites. Since I click link on a NYT Headline listed on Google News, I view *gasp* the NYT web site and its particular article. Which means, any ad dollars I generate there go to the NYT. The horror, the NYT is making more money thanks to Google News then without it (not to mention spreading its name out to more readers, who could purchase even subscriptions).

So am I missing something? Why would news publishers have issues with a site sending millions of hits per month at the news publisher's sites, generating far more money then if Google News didn't exist.

Re:So?

[Camulus]

There are only so many people on the internet. Let's say your cnn and cnn.com was the best way for most people to access news (not saying it is, but thing hypothetical here). Now, let's say that a web site sets up a portal that does direct back to your site, but also directs links to hundreds of other sources. While you can get readers from google news, it also provides an easy way for readers of your site to start browsing through 100 other news sites they didn't even know existed. So, for smaller sites, it is good. For bigger sites, maybe not so good.

Re:So?

[escher]

So am I missing something? Why would news publishers have issues with a site sending millions of hits per month at the news publisher's sites, generating far more money then if Google News didn't exist

Rule of Humanity #1: Most people are horribly, horribly stupid.

Can be a loss leader

[kbahey]

Google News is still valuable to Google, even if they cannot make money off it.

It is a free service provided for the public that give Google great publicity and a positive image. It does build their brand.

So, even if you consider it as a loss leader in marketingspeak, it is still valuable to them.

Now, as an alternate strategy, if they start providing ads for the news outlets themselves? Would the news outlets complain then?

Re:Bad Grammar...?

[SiliconEntity]

"Google News: Beta Not Make Money" is a pun!

"Google News Better Not Make Money" or else they'll be sued because it will have become commercial use, see?

inversion of control

[getafix]

Target the news organizations as customers and not news consumers. Tell news organizations that their web sites will get top linking if they pay some subscription fee. Not only will they get top billing on the news page, there could be a link where searches also have a NewsWords feature in addition to AdWords. For example, a search on volcanoes may have 2-3 links to news stories about Mt St Helens.

Small/niche/local sites can subscribe and get more traffic thrown their way. Big news sites may eventually follow.

Re:AdWords may not be good enough

[misterlump77]

Wow. This article is waaaay of the mark. Looks like the author really hasn't done much actual research of the content aggregation world.

News aggregation is the way the whole market is going. Nielson//NetRatings has shown that sites like Yahoo! News and others are now ahead of the news sites in popularity.

http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001562.php

I work for a company, Moreover Technologies, that has been in the online news aggregation business since 1998. As mentioned in the previous thread, the publishers love us because we offer more distribution for their content. We simply then redirect clicks back to their pages and they are able to realize the monetization from their site. They could shut us down, but why? It all a distribution game, more is always better.

In the online web portal world MSN News bot does this. Yahoo! does this. So why can't Google? I think the answer really is that Google is too busy on other areas that make more money. Search monetization is far more lucrative than news.

Who told you they don't make money from that...?

[j.leidner]

Ads are not the only way to make money from GOOG News. It's not a secret that many governments and companies are rather interested in that kind of knowledge aggregation software. They might just use the service to test their software before licensing it to governments, who knows.

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Fair use and the *current* site

[mattdm]

First of all, I can't see how a major offering from a for-profit company can be classified as "not commercial". "Non-profit" doesn't just mean that you're failing to make any money. Even if they don' have ads on this specific section of their site, the *whole thing* is a big ad for Look How Cool And Useful Google Is.

Adding advertising might cause the site to push the site's whose content they are linking to over the edge, but I don't really see how one can even argue that there's a fundamental difference.

Likewise, there's not a fundamental difference between Google News and the main Google search site, which _does_ have paid advertising.

And in both cases, sites which _wouldn't_ want to be indexed seem pretty silly. If you don't want people to find your web site, okay, keep it out of the search engines. Or save your money and don't put it on the web at all. This isn't a matter of fair use doctrine -- it's common sense.