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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."
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?
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.
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
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.
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...)