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Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News
An anonymous reader writes "Google has began removing web-based content of Paris-Based news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), from the Google News service. This past weekend we reported that the Agence France Presse had sued Google for displaying their photo's, stories, and news headlines on Google News without permission. AFP is seeking damages of around $17.5 million and requested the courts that Google News is not to display any of its copyrighted material. It appears Google is complying with what the AFP is requesting. Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman."
This scene is somewhat reminiscent of the scene from the Incredibles where victims of crimes start suing the superheroes for helping them.
Google has become the doorway to the internet. Your site doesn't exist until Google indexes it. Anyone who sues them isn't trying to prevent copyright infringement or reproduction of their data, they are most likely looking for a reason to press charges and make a quick franc.
The ones who don't get this concept will just quietly go under or be bought up by other news organizations that "get it". This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.
Looks like this will be one of those cases where the company deserves exactly what it's asking for. I wonder how they'll try to spin their declining web readership?
AFP make their money by selling their stories to other media organizations. If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing), they will be cutting off their main source of revenue.
All AFP is doing is using legitimate means to protect a legitimate business model.
why? because they're a news organization. they get money from selling the stories(and associated photos), not from giving them away for free so that another organization can get the ad revenue as well without paying them anything.
i'm pretty sure they would have happily sold the stuff to google under normal terms...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Not every source will do so unless they want $$$ for people to read their online material. Some are doing that right now. see: Wall Street Journal. Sure, there's a free story here & there, but they want to restrict content to subscribers.
/. story)
Papers which have less than the WSJ's stature pretty much know they are leaping from shrinking pond to shrinking pond. Paid readership is dropping....fast. And they don't have a solution. They know they have to have an online presence in order to compete against everyone else who knows they need to be online. And if they aren't online, most people aren't going to follow that newspaper.
The bottom line is those (readers) who are online will read online - in many cases moreso than hardcopy; especially if it's free. Those who aren't wired aren't in a number big enough to keep the paper in business across the long haul.
I have a silly question:
what are "photo's"? (see main
Well I can't help but wonder if the AFP's customers-- you know, the actual news sites google links-- are going to be particularly happy that that the AFP just got them blacklisted from google.
I mean, if I ran a news site of some sort, and I found that one of my content providers was engaging in direct and successful lobbying efforts to get me kicked off google news because I'd been buying content from them, I'd definitely start looking for an alternate provider for that content immediately.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing),
If a link, a headline and a half-paragraph quotation is "disseminating", we're all fucked.
Can't wait to see where we go next with this amazing new logic. "Amazon.com book reviews banned in france because people were quoting sentences from the books they reviewed, the book companies make their money by selling those books to customers, if they allow those sentences to be disseminated without the appropriate fee (as amazon.com book reviewers do) they will be cutting off their main source of revenue"...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
for the sake of the free press, i would think National Vanguard should stay.
but of course, that would make me a great big evil racist...
Er... "dinosaur"? "Certain destruction"? "Old methods of business"?
Listen, e-vangelising is all well and good - sometimes. Other times, we actually *need* these old-methods companies. Say AFP folds; who, then, gathers the news which Google collates? Google sure as hell doesn't. They index, and that's all.
AFP, BBC, ABC, Reuters; whatever, whoever: the fact is, these organisations are essential if we are to continue to receive cutting-edge, informative news from around the world.
AFP doesn't want to "defend a natural monopoly". It wants to ensure that it obtains sufficient revenue to allow it to continue to pay its journalists, without whom Google News would be largely pointless.
Oh god... please... stop this. AFP is a massive, globally recognised news organisation. Just because they're not on Google News doesn't mean they will sink into a void. The French - to their enormous credit - are fiercely nationalistic. You're not French (forgive the assumption, but I'm fairly sure it's valid) and therefore have no idea as to the scope of AFP's influence within France. It's like saying "if the BBC refuse to allow Google to index their content, BBC News will disappear within a month!!". Utter, complete nonsense. As a Brit, news.bbc.co.uk is the only news source I check. Google News can go jump. The whole world does not think like you, America. Sorry if that upsets you.
From the news organizations that realize being listed on Google News or other news aggregators (such as Topix.net) is beneficial to them because it directs users to their websites.
AFP doesn't want users directed to their website. Their business model is damaged by direct customer interaction: they want users directed to the websites of newspapers who reproduce their stories, and that won't happen if viewers can see the original source indexed alongside all the paying clones.
Who will decide to go read more ads and intrusive branding, when you can get the original just as easily?
Yes, yes... Yet, I can't see their point.
1. AFP is hurt in its sales because Google lets end-users get their news for free, so that they don't flock any longer to sites which buy news from AFP. I can see how going up against Google may be useful there, yet wouldn't it be faster and more effective to "secure" your own site? i.e.requiring registration etc...
2. AFP is hurt by other commercial sites getting and reproducing AFP news for free, and displaying them. Alright, teach'em a lesson by suing Google. Then again, I've never heard a news agency having these kinds of problems, as there are usually many value-added services clients get when they subscribe to services - such as actual "real time" news feeds.
3. At least according to Wikipedia, AFP is a government-subsidized news agency whose most important market is an artificial one -- i.e. France, where it's the "official" agency. Why go after Google like you were a real company, aggressively protecting your fictitious market?
It seems to me as though they're looking for additional funding for fiscal 2005, more than protecting a supposed market... After all we all have national budget problems in the EU (and not only there...)
> France is an insignificant piss ant country, not so much a nation as a rabble united by a variety of cheeses.
Wow, you look like an intelligent person capable of insightful discussion, now, grats.
> AFP is nothing compared to the Beeb.
Indeed. Let me explain it for you slowly : the BBC and AFP are not in the same business. BBC gives news to citizens, while AFP gives news to BBC (and about all newspapers in the world).
> How many shortwave programs does AFP broadcast?
Let me explain it for you slowly : AFP doesn't broadcast anything, they sell news to newspapers.
> The Beeb could get along quite well without Google News
And AFP doesn't give a fuck about google news, since, they're not a newspapers. Every major newspapers in the world is a customer of AFP. NYT, BBC, Washington Post, The Economist, all of them buy content and pictures from AFP. AFP is as widely known and as widely respected as Reuters. Both of them are the first and most respected content provider of every newspapers in the world. Without Reuters and AFP, you would more or less see no pictures on any newspapers. If you don't believe me, buy the NYT, and look for credits on their pictures. 90% of them are from AFP and Reuters.
You and I are not custumers of AFP, NYT, BBC and all are.
Basically, Google News is trying to take AFP work without paying for it. AFP is not happy with that, and they have every right to be, since Google is effectivly warezing from them.
This lawsuit has nothing to do with the French lawsuit on Yahoo, which was quite stupid. This lawsuit is very valid, and Google removing their content shows that they know they would loose in a lawsuit.
Next time you launch in a flamefest, try to educate yourself, you really do look like a moron talking out of his ass.