Newspapers Reconsidering Google News

News.com ran an article earlier in the week talking about the somewhat strained relationship between newspapers and Google. Google's stance is firm: 'We don't pay to index news content.' Just the same, newspapers with an online presence are starting to reconsider their relationship with Google, the value of linking, and the realities of internet economics. Talk of paying for content, as well as ongoing court cases, has observers considering both sides of the issue: "While some in newspaper circles point to the Belgium court ruling and the content deals with AP and AFP as a sign Google may be willing to pay for content, Google fans and bloggers interpreted the news quite differently. To them, it was obvious that the Belgium group had agreed to settle--even after winning its court case--because they discovered that they needed Google's traffic more than the fees that could be generated from news snippets. Observers note that with newspapers receiving about 25 percent of their traffic from search engines, losing Google's traffic had to sting."

Comments

Not a big concern.

[Khaed]

It more bugs me how many sites in google news are exact copies of the same thing. Makes finding more than one story somewhat of a bitch.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Gorshkov]

It more bugs me how many sites in google news are exact copies of the same thing. Makes finding more than one story somewhat of a bitch.

What's even worse, as far as I'm concerned, is clicking on wildly different headlines in different major newspapers .... and finding the exact same AP (or other wireservice) story.

Kinda makes you wonder about the "journalism is hard" comment in the article.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Anonymous Coward]

That says more about the AP and the UPI than it does Google.

Re:Not a big concern.

[larry bagina]

It makes me wonder why google doesn't partner with AP/UPI/Knight Ridder/Reuters, etc and cut out the middleman. Or how long it will be until they do.

Re:Not a big concern.

[iminplaya]

No, actually AP and UPI are fine. The problem is that so many rely on them. It's very economical for the papers not to have to hire reporters. I personally don't care for it because I want as many takes on a story as possible, but now even the papers from China and Al Jazeera are just using them sometimes. Maybe so they can get the Google hits also. I guess the bloggers will have to fill in the gaps. But I still have a thing, justified or not, about regular reporters being a bit more leashed in by real professional editors and stuff. I kind of like to have a local paper's take. Something about familiarity with people you "know". Call me old fashioned, I supposed, but that's what I grew up with. I still suffer from conditioned reflex like everybody else. Don't take to mean I wish the bloggers to go away. They are very necessary, a bit more so with all the corporate consolidation happening now. It's just that there's so many of them. Separating the wheat from the chaff just became my job all of a sudden. Life's too short for this. It says a lot about Google that AP and UPI get most of the top hits. That's where the money is.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Jenna555]

In my experience as a journalist (a while back) its amazing to find out how much newspapers rely on PR wire services and direct contact with spokespeople. There is one paradigm shift that can impact newspapers massively in this regard. Blogs that cover news (and blog owners that are finding alternative uses for their on line properties) get ever more dominant.

Re:Not a big concern.

[JonathanR]

And Slashdot will ensure you get to read it, if you missed it the first time...

Re:Not a big concern.

[zappepcs]

You are right on the money there, but Google only 'indexes' the world's information, they do not channel it... a small but important difference, though I'd like to see the source of the article highlighted before going there. If three say from AP and one from UPI, then I know that I really only need to read two of the stories. Maybe someday

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

No, actually AP and UPI are fine. The problem is that so many rely on them ... even the papers from China and Al Jazeera are just using them sometimes

The CIA should put agents into AP and UPI to pick stories in a way that corrodes competing unfree civilisations by encouraging them to liberalise. Popular US culture and feminism for example, or the benefits of property rights. Or economic statistics that show Taiwan is doing better economically. I guess it's a kind of trolling, drawing attention to facts that hostile tyrannies need to supress.

Sort of like a 21st century version of the Information Research Department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Ninetee n_Eighty-Four_and_final_years

Re:Not a big concern.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your solution to competing unfree (nice Orwellian touch) civilizations is to use government agencies to liberalise the news. I guess you think your civilization is perfect and should be implemented worldwide at any cost, disrespecting any local traditions or cultures by supplanting your own views. A true modern day missionary. I think you should re-read 1984 and consider what part the Ministry of Truth played.

Re:Not a big concern.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Kinda makes you wonder about the "journalism is hard" comment in the article.

Oh I'm sure that real journalism is quite hard. There's just not very many real journalists.

Re:Not a big concern.

[TapeCutter]

"It more bugs me how many sites in google news are exact copies of the same thing. Makes finding more than one story somewhat of a bitch."

On the contrary I think that stories that have put in their own research/spin can be easily identified by scrolling through google's list of snipets. Why do you think content producers both love and hate google?

Re:Not a big concern.

[Anonymous Coward]

Idem dito for Belgium, where almost every online newspaper exactly copies the same Belga story. I can't remember how many times I tried to find more background information on something, only to see the same text duplicated word for word.

For breaking-news stuff, you're better off visiting Wikipedia.

Re:Not a big concern.

[TapeCutter]

If that fails we can always ban unfreindly newspapers in Iraq and bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

I guess you think your civilization is perfect and should be implemented worldwide at any cost, disrespecting any local traditions or cultures by supplanting your own views

No, I just think that China would be improved if it had free elections. And all those Islamic countries would be improved if they had a culture which respected the rights of people other than rich, straight men - probably expecting a Jeffersonian democracy there is wishful thinking at this point. More to the point, not only would these changes be better for the Chinese and Arabs, they would make the world a safer place for the US and its allies.

Incidentally, don't you see the irony of arguing anonymously on the internet that local traditions like secret police torturing people for discussing politics should be respected? The only reason that you're free to do it is because your ancestors were willing to kill and die to stamp out those sorts of traditions.

I think you should re-read 1984 and consider what part the Ministry of Truth played.

You realise that Orwell actually worked for the IRD and other propaganda bodies which did exactly what I suggested, right? Both against the Fascists in WWII and the Communists in the Cold War. Incidentally 1984 is set in hellish world where people allowed totalitarian movements to take over everywhere so it shouldn't be entirely unexpected that he would do this, if you actually understand what it is about.

Maybe you should read this

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/eng lish/e_patw

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

Suppose you were in the occupation authority of Germany after World War II and Völkischer Beobachter decided to keep publishing and encouraged Germans to kill American troops. Would you ban it?

Re:Not a big concern.

[Ajehals]

First off, here is the correct link Volkischer Beobachter. It should be noted that that particular paper was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, i.e. the Nazi party, whilst Al-Jazeera isn't and has never been related to either the Baath Party in Iraq, or Al-Qa'ida.

Al-Jazeera is a Doha based organisation, Doha being the capital of Qatar, and Qatar being an apparently key US ally in the middle east, along with Saudi Arabia. It tends to carry news aimed at middle eastern readers/viewers.

Al-Jazeera isn't significantly anti-western, or pro Al-Qa'ida. The stories it carries and even the opinions offered are often similar to what you might see on the BBC, ITN and CNN.

The only thing that makes Al-Jazeera different from the mainly western news agencies out there is that it has the capability of being on the ground in the midst of things and then reports what it sees, often including the views and opinions of people in the region. Unfortunately this sometimes doesn't fit with the general media picture coming out of the middle east, well it mostly does if you watch Euro-centric news, but not if you compare it to news for US consumption.

As for Al-Jazeera encouraging attacks on US troops, I'd like to see where that reference comes from, as I certainly haven't seen anything of the sort.

I would go so far as to suggest that the US Governments actions (I wouldn't blame the US military, they have enough problems at the moment and at least have the excuse of following orders that seem legitimate) in carrying out attacks (accidental or otherwise) against journalists of all types in the middle east is despicable, I would go so far as to say that it is criminal, but sadly understandable. If I were a commander on the ground I would prefer that the country I was occupying did not get information about what was going on, or find out about the mistakes that have been made. I would prefer that all media in country were controlled by friendly organisations so that the battle for "hearts and minds" would be easier to win, this would be doubly the case if I didn't understand what Al-Jazeera was. Sadly in a 24/7 news cycle and global coverage, those days are long gone.

Its funny how we see the US demanding democratic reform, and press freedom in many areas of the world, and then carrying out attacks and propaganda campaigns against one of the few organisations that makes use of that press freedom,after all the freedom to publish the facts as you see them is curtailed if you are likely to be killed in the process.

So in short, your apparent comparison is flawed and moreover does not give the credit to the Al-Jazeera and other (non embedded) journalists in trouble spots, doing an important, difficult and dangerous job, nor does it show any compassion for those innocent reporters killed without good cause.

Re:Not a big concern.

[larry bagina]

google finance is doing more than indexing information. And there are other google properties (orkut, blogger, documents, picasa, youtube, sketch up, etc) which aren't about indexing.

Microsoft (and occasionally Apple) can kill 3rd party software by including the functionality in the core OS. The nature of the web changes that dynamic, but google's prominence and popularity means everybody who relies on them for traffic should be worried.

Re:Not a big concern.

[rtb61]

Google is also a competitor. All those newspapers sell advertising, and as they transition to online as their dominant form of distributing the news and adds, so they come into greater competition with google. Watch for for a new search engine partnership forming between the small and mid sized news media outlets.

They need to compete with google head on, other wise via search, google will always has head start over them when it comes to gaining the readers eyes. The also do not want to mention their competitor google unless google is paying for the adds, the days of putting google search free on your web site are over. Everybody will be expecting google to pay per 'click' for the use of google search on their web site.

Google has lost it's viral marketing created clean image, from that cheeky marketing ploy to prop it profits by underpaying it's coders (it's really cool to work at google for less, uh huh ;) ), to pilfering patents, and extensive invasions of the end users privacy. The newspapers had better switch on before they start forking at large amounts of money for product placements with google.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Strashno]

As a current journalist working as a "converter" of broadcast news to online news, I can assure you that most reporters/producers don't particularly enjoy pasting AP/Reuters/APF wire stories with different headlines. The root of the problem is that most mainstream media outlets don't put enough into their online counterparts. As one of only 2 people posting stories onto a broadcast news station's website, it's very difficult to put forth the effort on Lindsey Lohan's latest car crash when you can spend more time on a compelling local story. It's getting better though. The problem is that people will turn to news aggregators before the problem fixes itself, I fear.

Re:Not a big concern.

[bberens]

It's getting better though. The problem is that people will turn to news aggregators before the problem fixes itself, I fear. I know it's largely a problem of matter of perspective but I view the news aggregators as forcing news sources to improve the quality of their material. If you have the best material you'll likely be on the front page at the news aggregator site/feed. If I like your material enough I may just RSS feed your news stories to my personal aggregator or my Google home page. I may even give up the news aggregators (google news) and just come straight to you. However, I would've never found you without the aggregator.

Re:Not a big concern.

[myowntrueself]

As for Al-Jazeera encouraging attacks on US troops, I'd like to see where that reference comes from, as I certainly haven't seen anything of the sort.

Well I *suppose* that if Al Jazeera journalists were to see US troops smearing pig fat on their bullets to, er, protect them from 'rust'... and they reported this... then this may be seen by some as 'encouraging attacks on US troops'...

Re:Not a big concern.

[TapeCutter]

I don't have the link handy but Robert Fisk wrote an excellent article about the bombing of AJ and the loss of one of his friends during the attack.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

First off, here is the correct link Volkischer Beobachter. It should be noted that that particular paper was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, i.e. the Nazi party, whilst Al-Jazeera isn't and has never been related to either the Baath Party in Iraq, or Al-Qa'ida.

Al-Jazeera is a Doha based organisation, Doha being the capital of Qatar, and Qatar being an apparently key US ally in the middle east, along with Saudi Arabia. It tends to carry news aimed at middle eastern readers/viewers.

The link was fine until slashdot stripped out the o with an umlaut. Guess you gotta keep those dodgy foreign characters out ;-)

The paper I had in mind was Al Hawsa, which is a Muqtada al-Sadr newspaper which did encourage attacks on American troops. Sadrists are hardly a democratic party too, and at that point Iraq as under military occupation, so it's hard to get too worked up about their rights to free speech.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/28/iraq .main/

Al-Jazeera isn't significantly anti-western, or pro Al-Qa'ida. The stories it carries and even the opinions offered are often similar to what you might see on the BBC, ITN and CNN.

Yeah right. It's staffed by people who left the BBC because it wasn't sufficiently pro fundamentalist and anti American.

The only thing that makes Al-Jazeera different from the mainly western news agencies out there is that it has the capability of being on the ground in the midst of things and then reports what it sees, often including the views and opinions of people in the region

I've heard that Al Jazeera crews occasionally turn up before bombings that kill US soldiers. And the coverage is certainly anti American enough to count as incitement.

Tayssir Alouni is actually in prison for links to Al Qaeda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayssir_Alouni

Actually, the more you read about them, the more it looks like they are fellow travellers of al Qaeda, despised by most non fundamentalists. And it's ironic that US/UK liberals seem to like them so much, given their rabidly anti liberal politics.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the newspaper is worried about their content on Google they could always read the webmaster guidelines and redesign their site. Not so hard to have a headline and synopsis that get indexed and main stories that are set to "noindex".

problem solved please send cheque to...

Re:Not a big concern.

[Ajehals]

...staffed by people who left the BBC because it wasn't sufficiently pro fundamentalist and anti American.... I've heard that Al Jazeera crews.... Actually, the more you read about them, the more it looks like they are fellow travellers of al Qaeda.....given their rabidly anti liberal politics...

Well looks like you have made your mind up already that Al-Jazeera == Al-Qa'ida. What I find strange is that the US administration and the UK government haven't actually claimed that Al-Jazeera are involved in terrorism in some way, given that both governments have previously been quite happy to identify groups that they see as threatening as terrorists, what is stopping them in this case?

More importantly would be defining the terms "support of terrorism", "collaboration" or even "terrorism". At present terms like these are used interchangeably to deamonise any group or entity that is either opposed or not sufficiently in support of US policy, in that environment an organisation that reports news in an area where people are quite legitimately annoyed at the US is going to be a target of US anger and probably portrayed as "evil terrorist collaborators".

What I would say is simple. If Al-Jazeera staff are involved in terrorism, then charge them and put them on trial, simply murdering people as they work, and whilst they pose no physical threat is not justifiable, it is criminal.

Now to move on to your comments about Tayssir Alouni, I have one question to ask, what was he convicted of? The answer is collaborating with terrorists. In short he was accused and found guilty of having contact with suspected terrorists and links to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Wouldn't you expect a journalist who was working in Afghanistan, covering a war between the Taliban and the US/UK to have contacts with people like the Taliban? Or would you prefer the more common media approach of simply restating press releases and official information? I would also expect a journalist to have contacts throughout the communities he covered, including with unsavoury individuals.

I am not saying that the Spanish authorities are wrong, but I am sceptical about the circumstances surrounding this conviction and the nature of it and I doubt I am alone. Oh and does the arrest of one man in an organisation of thousands convict the entire organisation of the same crime?I don't think so.

As for Al-Jazeera having "rabidly anti liberal politics", I would suggest you look at their website and find an example of this, they seem happy to report on gay rights issues in Russia and highlight the plight of Afghan women, none of which would seem to fit into the anti-liberal view you are crediting them with.

So once again in summary, I disagree with you, and you appear to be regurgitating propaganda. There is no danger in having a news agency reporting the news with a viewpoint different to that of the US, it is healthy. Every reporter, program and news agency will display a bias of some sort, it is a product of being human, our job is not kill people whose views differ from our own, it is to look at what they are saying and then decide what to do with that information.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

Now to move on to your comments about Tayssir Alouni, I have one question to ask, what was he convicted of? The answer is collaborating with terrorists. In short he was accused and found guilty of having contact with suspected terrorists and links to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Wouldn't you expect a journalist who was working in Afghanistan, covering a war between the Taliban and the US/UK to have contacts with people like the Taliban?

Umm, no. Admittedly, if you read through all the statements by al Jazeera and various "Arab Human Rights" commissions (wonder how they feel about rights for homosexuals, or women, or athiests?), you get that impression.

But what he was actually convicted of is being a financial courier for al-Qaida and helping al-Qaida members infiltrate Spain. Incidentally, bin Laden has put 'getting back' Spain up there along with getting back 'Palestine'

http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week- of-Mon-20050926/024363.html
Alluni, who began his career as an Arabic translator for a news agency in Granada, Spain, is credited as being the only journalist based in Afghanistan in October 2001 to show the world what the US war machine was doing to one of the world's poorest countries.

By then working for Aljazeera, Alluni was able to capture images of civilian victims in the destitute villages of Afghanistan and the miserable streets of Kabul. His coverage triggered international outrage over the US action in Afghanistan.

Yeah, sounds unbiased to me.

More info here
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129407&page=1

The indictment details his travels and wiretapped phone conversations in which Alouni allegedly agrees to carry money and messages to al Qaeda operatives planning the Sept. 11 attacks. It also charges that Alouni later used his job at al Jazeera while based in Afghanistan to make it easier for him to pass money to al Qaeda members.

Alouni also helped Mohammed Bahaiah, also known as Abu Khaled and a member of al Qaeda, get permanent residency in Spain, the indictment maintains. Bahaiah attended al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, but also stayed with both Yarkas in Madrid and Alouni in Granada. Alouni also allowed Bahaiah to use his mailing address on his immigration forms.

Finally, the indictment says that when Alouni started working for al Jazeera in Afghanistan in January, 2000, he brought money from Yarkas to Bahaiah, who was at the training camps.

So he couriered money to people in terrorist training camps and sponsored several terrorists when then applied to enter Spain. All the stuff about his contacts being just about his job from his al Jazeera colleagues makes me think that they are equally implicated.

As for Al-Jazeera having "rabidly anti liberal politics", I would suggest you look at their website and find an example of this, they seem happy to report on gay rights issues in Russia and highlight the plight of Afghan women, none of which would seem to fit into the anti-liberal view you are crediting them with.

I see they have "Mecca time" on the first page of their website. If you're a Muslim, you don't believe in gay or women's rights. Period. Try reading up on it. And reporting on a bunch of gay rights protesters getting beaten up by people who claim 'Moscow is not Sodom' doesn't tell you which side the reporter or the readers sympathize with.

Come to think of it, notice the Sodom reference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Is lamic_view

The story of Sodom is used by Muslims as an example of how homosexuality is condemned by Allah.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Ajehals]

Firstly, With regard to Tayssir Alouni, as I said in my previous post, I don't think that the Spanish court was wrong, what I am concerned about is how much impact his journalistic contacts within groups hostile to the west had on the case, most significantly, I am concerned that it appeared (from media coverage here in europe at least) his interview with Bin-Laden's was used against him.

He was apparently under investigation by the Spanish police as early as 1994 for having contacts with people who, like him are exiles from Syria. At that point he was not employed by Al-Jazeera, but a different media organisation. The facts of the case are that he was convicted of "collaboration", not funding, sponsorship or direct involvement, there are many many stories around insinuating that he was Bin-Laden primary contact to the outside world, and that he couriered money to Bin-Laden, helping the latter remain concealed, none of these are from official or primary sources though.

The only official documentation that says anything other than "conspiracy" is a statement by Tayssir Alouni, prior to his arrest stating that he carried messages between Al-Jazeera and the Taliban, and cash to help some of his friends, there is no explanation as to what amounts of cash or its purpose. According to information that came out during the trial he was supposed to have taken about $4,500 US to Mohamed Bahaiah, who is, apparently "considered at the international level as a supposed courier for the Al Qaeda organization between Afghanistan and Europe". So, it is certainly not clear cut that Tayssir Alouni == Al Qa'ida, making the statement that therefore Al-Jazeera == Al Qa'ida, is simply ludicrous (it would be like suggesting that ABC + CNN + FOX are all just fronts for the US Government and that the BBC is a Front for the UK Government). When Tayssir Alouni did his bin laden interview, he was working for both A-Jazeera and CNN, so does that mean that CNN are also in some way implicated?

Secondly, If you're a Muslim, you don't believe in gay or women's rights

That is not true for all Muslims, but a minority, in the same way that that statement is true for some Christians but not a majority, (I'm not sure that the woman's rights element is true for Jews, but homosexuality is certainly frowned upon by some, in fact for all three major religions homosexuality is generally seen as a problem, whilst women rights have more recently been accepted)

Last point

You said that "reporting on a bunch of gay rights protesters getting beaten up by people who claim 'Moscow is not Sodom' doesn't tell you which side the reporter or the readers sympathize with.

Isn't that how its supposed to be? Report the news not some slanted version of it. If Al-Jazeera were a fundamentalist Muslim extremist news source don't you think that gay rights protectors being beaten up would be a good place to show some of the bias you are crediting them with?

Look, The point is really simple, just because you don't like what is reported by Al-Jazeera doesn't mean what they report is wrong, just because it goes against the US position, does not make Al-Jazeera a terrorist organisation. Moreover just because someone is a Muslim doesn't make them intolerant, violent or anti-western/anti-American, just as being Christian doesn't make someone intolerant, violent or anti-evolution, and neither position excludes the possibility of being any or all of those things.

Don't let nationality, ethnicity or religion detract from the validity of a viewpoint, or allow it to cloud what is factual and what is not. Religion, ethnicity and nationality and are factors that influence people, but they don't define them. Islam, like Christianity or Judaism is open to interpretation, and there are a great many interpretations that are followed, add in the fact that we are al human and you will find that issues that seem black and white are actually made up of many shades of grey.

Oh and one more question - Alluni was able to capture images of civilian victims in the destitute villages of Afghanistan and the miserable streets of Kabul. - How do you take bias pictures? Should civilian victims in Afghanistan not be shown?

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

Look, The point is really simple, just because you don't like what is reported by Al-Jazeera doesn't mean what they report is wrong, just because it goes against the US position, does not make Al-Jazeera a terrorist organisation. Moreover just because someone is a Muslim doesn't make them intolerant, violent or anti-western/anti-American, just as being Christian doesn't make someone intolerant, violent or anti-evolution, and neither position excludes the possibility of being any or all of those things.

I don't really like Christianity either, but comparing it to present day Islam is laughable. Present day Islam is more like Dark Ages Christianity, and in practice it does make you hostile, at least theoretically to all the things that make up a decent society. I think comparisons with other totalitarian ideologies are not overstating this.

The only official documentation that says anything other than "conspiracy" is a statement by Tayssir Alouni, prior to his arrest stating that he carried messages between Al-Jazeera and the Taliban, and cash to help some of his friends, there is no explanation as to what amounts of cash or its purpose. According to information that came out during the trial he was supposed to have taken about $4,500 US to Mohamed Bahaiah, who is, apparently "considered at the international level as a supposed courier for the Al Qaeda organization between Afghanistan and Europe".

Jesus what a whiner. Cash for his friends. The most annoying thing about people like him is the way the dissimulate to fool the naive.

He brought money to "his friends" the Taliban, and helped them infiltrate Spain so they could kill people. As far as I'm concerned if you are a Muslim living in the West, helping the Taliban or any similar movement attack your country is treason and you should be locked up somewhere very unpleasant.

And with respect to the gay rights stuff, you specifically mentioned it as evidence that al Jazeera were liberal with respect to homosexuality. My point about the report is that a typical Muslim reader will probably not read the report in this way - they will see it as a sign that the Russians are rejecting liberal values.

Oh and one more question - Alluni was able to capture images of civilian victims in the destitute villages of Afghanistan and the miserable streets of Kabul. - How do you take bias pictures? Should civilian victims in Afghanistan not be shown?

If they are genuine and your report on both sides equally then yes. But I've heard other examples of Arab media fabricating reports of civilian casualties by the US and hiding reports of casualties by the insurgents. E.g. two young Iraqi girls used to sleep near to US soldiers because it was the safest place. The Arab media used the picture of them sleeping but claimed the Americans had shot them. Insurgents and terrorists are utterly unconcerned about Iraqi civilian casualties - suicide bombing crowds of children to get the few GIs giving them candy - but the Arab media never report this.

Once again, the Orwell link springs to mind.

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/eng lish/e_patw

It's not pacifism if you exaggerate the sins of the good guys and hide the sins of the bad ones. You're actually on the side of the bad guys. And it's not journalism either, and shouldn't be protected as such.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Ajehals]

My point from the beginning of this whole exchange has been simple, if obviously not clear enough.

1) Al-Jazeera is possibly the only middle eastern news organisation that presents the news as it finds it, (as opposed to the news as X countries information ministry dictates it) it should be applauded for its efforts. It should be supported in its attempt to bring news from the region to the world whilst supplying information to the populace of a region where accurate information is often unavailable and misinformation the norm.

2) Attacks on journalists are reprehensible, there is no excuse for deliberately attacking and killing journalists (that isn't to say that only journalists should be looked after, civilians should also not be deliberately killed, however journalists often find themselves in dangerous positions and usually managed to upset both sides in any given conflict). Attacking state propaganda machines and/or terrorist organisations is a different scenario, but attacking journalists because they report facts you do not like is wrong.

Hope that clears it up.

Re:Not a big concern.

[Hal_Porter]

1) Al-Jazeera is possibly the only middle eastern news organisation that presents the news as it finds it, (as opposed to the news as X countries information ministry dictates it) it should be applauded for its efforts. It should be supported in its attempt to bring news from the region to the world whilst supplying information to the populace of a region where accurate information is often unavailable and misinformation the norm.

I still disagree. It's funded by the Emir of Qatar. Mind you, I think the editorial point of view is more representative of various Islamists than him. I think there's something deeper going on here, which is that the Bush/Blair attempt to democratize the middle east is basically misguided. Democracy there now will only last as long as it takes for Islamists to take over.

1) Al-Jazeera is possibly the only middle eastern news organisation that presents the news as it finds it, (as opposed to the news as X countries information ministry dictates it) it should be applauded for its efforts. It should be supported in its attempt to bring news from the region to the world whilst supplying information to the populace of a region where accurate information is often unavailable and misinformation the norm.

If people are pumping out propaganda for some totalitarian movement, then I don't agree with killing them just for that. Mind you, lots of what al Jazeera steps beyond this. It seems to be characteristic of Islamists that they attempt to exploit the fact that civilized countries are wary of killing journalists and other civillians, but they don't understand that the protection comes with some costs. E.g. journalists are not allowed to bring money to one of the sides in a conflict if they expect to be protected by the other.

You can see the same sort of thing in Palestine too. They complain that the Israelis target ambulances, but use them to transport weapons. Or they complain that the Israelis kill children but distribute pictures of them with suicide belts on.

I actually think that fighting people like that is bad for the West, since it will tend to make Western armed forces lose all restraint. We should stop doing it and avoid it in future. But if they attack us and we're forced to fight, we should basically give up on the idea of fighting a civilised war where there are protected categories of non combatants. You can see that the Israelis for example have gone farther down this root than I'd want the UK or the US to go.

News...PAPERS?

[Anonymous Coward]

NewsPAPERS or online news websites?

Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Opportunist]

This actually offers an interesting question: Can you dare to sue google if you depend on page visits? Can you actually survive it when Google decides to "zero" you, to make you nonexistant in their searches? Google is, after all, THE way people use when trying to find something. Sure, there are other search engines, but Google is pretty much the dominating factor in internet search.

Not being listed in Google means that your competitor gets all the hits you might have gotten.

Can you then dare to stand up against Google? What if Google decides to take the stance of "play by our rules or we'll make sure nobody finds you anymore"?

Not really a comforting thought, when someone can dictate how the internet has to run...

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Standing up to Google" aka "Biting the hand that feeds you"

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Aoreias]

I like how the guy from the Tribune implies that Google is making money off Google News.

Last I checked, Google News had no ads and was free, which means it's raking in $0 dollars in profit. Why in the world would Google pay to index newspaper articles when it isn't making any money off of it? I can understand getting upset if Google is using those snippings to make a profit (even though it may be covered by Fair Use in some jurisdictions)

Seriously though. They're redirecting traffic to newspapers and not making money off it. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[suv4x4]

This actually offers an interesting question: Can you dare to sue google if you depend on page visits? Can you actually survive it when Google decides to "zero" you, to make you nonexistant in their searches?

This is the reason why I do believe it'll be nice to see Yahoo and Microsoft work (or merge?) together better, so they can compete better against Google.

I do use Google today, it has the best search results, undeniably. But it also has a huge market share, which makes content producers very nervous, for a good reason.

Google may delist you overnight, after an algorithm tweak, for something completely innocent, and not SEO related at all, that you did on your site. It's unavoidable, even if Google was run by shiny white angels with halo above their heads, an algorithm for a search engine isn't an exact science, and so anybody in any moment can end up as an edge case that Google doesn't handle properly.

If we have 2-3 major search engines with equal market share, we gain the following benefits:

1. Spammers will have hard time scamming all engines at once, as they use wildly different backend processing, and as a result receive less traffic (i.e. if half the traffic comes from Live, and half from Google, cheating one of them gets you half the possible traffic, not all of it).

2. If you happen to be an edge case on either search engine after an algorithm tweak, it's much less likely both engines did the same tweak at the same time, so while your traffic will decrease, the other search engines on the market will still provide enough traffic for you until this is sorted.

3. When either search engine does something inappropriate, or questionable (ok, for the simple folk out there: "evil"), people will have easier time going to court to defend their rights, because if the search engine provider becomes abusive and threatens blacklisting, that'll have much smaller effect if the engine isn't a monopolist (in this case they'll mostly hurt themselves).

4. Innovation, innovation, innovation. Just imagine the kind of innovation we'll see from both Yahoo/Microsoft and Google if they had equal market share. Microsoft would have much bigger revenue and thus much bigger incentive to support their position on the market. Google, likewise.

I mean, what's the best we saw of Google as of late? A week ago they changed the layout of their home page which made it JavaScript dependent and harder to work with. That's not innovation, that's regression. As for the rest of their new offerings, they mostly come from companies they bought recently.

Yahoo's holding on to their "portal" strategy since this is where the most of their income comes from so their search acceptable but certainly not good enough or innovative. They can't risk spending too much money on search R&D alone.

As for Microsoft Live, they're apparently trying to come up with interesting interfaces for search, but they are quite young on that one market, their search results aren't really good, and need the experience of Yahoo to give them a boost and incentive to spend more research in the area.

So, bottom line: monopoly is never good, even when it's supposedly "not evil".

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[dcapel]

The Google giveth and the Google taketh away...

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[WindBourne]

Yahoo working with MS would be a total disaster to Yahoo. EVERY company that MS has partnered with, where MS is the junior partner has always resulted in MS using that to slingshot themselves past that company while taking them down. In terms of a merger, that would actually be detrimental to the industry. It is far better that both companies keep on their paths to enable multiple search paths (so to speak).

As to some of your following rational, let me take a shot at it.:

1. Right now, Google is aware of scams because so many attempts are made. It is far easier for Google to see it, when they are bearing the brunt of it. The interesting thing, is that spammers will now be able to make even more use of them. MS has a long history of poor security and will almost certainly miss what Google has done with this. MS will try to copy such items as the cache, and it will be used by spammers.
2. Good point, but you assume that you are high in all. Chances are that if you take a hit in Google (you were almost certainly on a edge in the first place), then you were probably not at the top on the others.
3. I doubt that Google would de-list you because you sue them. That would invite a looksy by the feds.
4. Google is already extremely innovative. In fact, Yahoo was as well ( a decade ago). Sadly, MS is not. To be nice, they are copiers of other people's work with a one-off. If you want innovation, then keep all 3 companies seperate.

As to Google's innovation, not all of it is visible. Wait. I have no doubt that Google has some interesting things coming. They have been hiring true best and brightess, not wanna-be's. As it is, you point to search as being their innovation, when in reality, it is data mining for their ads that they are true experts at.
Yahoo is also interesting in that they are moving towards changing their infrastructure to make it easier to change. They are hoping to have the nimbalness of Google, as well as the ability to control their ad space.
MS is throwing more than 10x the money that both of the other company combined are currently throwing at it. Give MS time.

If you want true innovation, then disallow such a merger/partnership. MS has never used a merger for information. It has always been market share that they want. In addition, MS already has a monster monopoly that they can (and apparently are ) using to help themselves. They would use this to shut out Google, not compete against them.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[DrEldarion]

What bastardization of the word "monopoly" are you using to describe a ~65% marketshare? That's like saying that Coke has a monopoly on cola just because they're the most popular.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[suv4x4]

Google is aware of scams because so many attempts are made [..] MS has a long history of poor security and will almost certainly miss what Google has done with this.

I'm not sure how you imagine the workflow in Microsoft regarding this, maybe something like this:

Jo: Hey, spammers are attacking Live.com successfully!
Bob: Yup, I see that.
Jo: Ok, I'll analyze why this is happening and propose a fix...
Bob: NO! WAIT! Don't forget: we have a long history of poor security.
Jo: Oh yea, what the hell was I thinking. We don't want to bring inconsistencies in our history of security.

The security problems of Windows per se, are for legacy reasons, and the need to support legacy applications/API-s You can't abruptly alter an OS overnight. Initially Windows was never even intended to run in a wide untrusted network (the concept of a browser didn't even exist back then).

Poor insight, sure, but I think they know now, what Internet is. As such Live.com, as a website, has zero of these problems.

As long as it outputs HTML/CSS/JS, they can rearchitect the whole thing and you won't even notice.

I doubt that Google would de-list you because you sue them. That would invite a looksy by the feds.

They may not so blatantly do it, but tell me: if your business may disappear in a blink of an eye if Google turns you back, would you be quick to go against them? They have thousands of ways to hurt you, and to make it look neutral. You may never know what hit you.

Google is already extremely innovative.

You know, they were extremely innovative in 1998, when they came up with the search engine concepts, pagerank and so on. Now they have a good business model, but there's tons of obvious stuff they could do to improve the search experience which they don't seem interested in.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Dan Ost]

but there's tons of obvious stuff they could do to improve the search experience which they don't seem interested in.

What sorts of things have you got in mind?

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Dan Ost]

You are considered a monopoly when you have undue influence over your market (and sometimes related markets). In some markets, that might require almost 100% market share, in other markets that might only require 20%.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Carlos Laviola]

1. The exclusive power, or privilege of selling a commodity;
                the exclusive power, right, or privilege of dealing in
                some article, or of trading in some market; sole command
                of the traffic in anything, however obtained; as, the
                proprietor of a patented article is given a monopoly of
                its sale for a limited time; chartered trading companies
                have sometimes had a monopoly of trade with remote
                regions; a combination of traders may get a monopoly of a
                particular product.
                [1913 Webster]

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[xmas2003]

Ditto what parent said that Google doesn't (directly) profit from Google News. However, what happens is that the newspapers lose eyeballs ... which translates to $$$. Guess the Tribune guy didn't want to word it quite that way!

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[CodeBuster]

Google may delist you overnight, after an algorithm tweak, for something completely innocent, and not SEO related at all, that you did on your site. It's unavoidable, even if Google was run by shiny white angels with halo above their heads, an algorithm for a search engine isn't an exact science, and so anybody in any moment can end up as an edge case that Google doesn't handle properly.

If people spent more time creating genuinely *valuable* and original creative content for their sites instead of hiring search engine optimizers to "tweak" their site to take advantage of intermitent "flaws" in the implementation of a proprietary search algorithm then they wouldn't have such a big problem when a change to the internal implementation negates or even punishes their "tweak" and their attempt to game the system backfires in their face. If they chose to rely on black hat trickery to boost their search rank then they shouldn't complain when Google pulls the rug out from under their feet.

The other thing about search engines that people tend to forget is that Google ranks content based upon what everyone thinks in the aggregate about how much a particular site is worth. No doubt, the content producers believe that their content is the best out there, but other web users and therefore Google may disagree. One cannot sue the public, or by extension an agency which aggregates the opinion of the public, simply for not agreeing with the official line of the content producers. Imagine what the world would be like if Mazda or GM or Ford could sue Consumer Reports (and prevail) simply because Consumer Reports gave them a bad review...if they materialy misrepresented facts then there may be a case (although possibly difficult to prove), but you cannot sue somebody (and prevail) simply because it is their opinion that your product sucks and they tell other people who ask what their opinion is. People will choose to believe who they want to believe whether that is Google or Consumer Reports or the content providers.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're ignorant on the subject. There are many legitimate techniques not related to SEO that at one point or another caused issues with Google, such as Fahrner image replacement (FIR).

You can get in the Google blacklist even without changing a letter on the site. It's enough for enough spam sites to link to your domain for some reason.

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Dun Malg]

A week ago they changed the layout of their home page which made it JavaScript dependent Their home page shows up exactly the same in plain HTML if you turn of JS. It's not JS "dependent".

Re:Do no evil, despite a monopoly?

[Snaller]

"I mean, what's the best we saw of Google as of late? A week ago they changed the layout of their home page which made it JavaScript dependent and harder to work with."

While their "design" has started to suck in many areas (Google groups for instance), you don't need javascript to use the homepage.

Google and Xinhua

[MisterCookie]

I refuse to use Google News ever since I noticed that they use Xinhua(The PRC's state newspaper agency) as a source. Ya, I'm real sure the journalism of a totalitarian state that is responsible for the deaths of 3000+ people(then reporting only a handful were injured) will be real accurate.

Re:Google and Xinhua

[Gorshkov]

Ya, I'm real sure the journalism of a totalitarian state that is responsible for the deaths of 3000+ people(then reporting only a handful were injured) will be real accurate.

The important thing to know about a news service - ANY news service - is it's institutional bias. And yes, they all have them.

Once you know the bias, you can use that and some critical reasoning skills to parse through the stories - and you'd be amazed at just how much good information you CAN get that way, regardless of the bias.

There's a damned good reason why everybody - and I mean absolutly EVERYBODY - in the intelligence community read pravda and izvestia during the cold war. Because it was a wonderful source of information.

Re:Google and Xinhua

[zCyl]

I refuse to use Google News ever since I noticed that they use Xinhua(The PRC's state newspaper agency) as a source.

So don't click on it if it offends your sensibilities so greatly. Personally I like being able to see a variety of perspectives, even propaganda laced ones. You have to pay attention to propaganda so you know what information other people are being fed.

Google news does not present you with truth. It presents you with a distribution of news.

Re:Google and Xinhua

[pairo]

Wow, that's so ignorant and stupid I can't believe it. It's like saying you won't walk on the street because killers walk the streets. Personally, I've read some of those articles and they're not half bad... Of course, not on touchy issues, but, still.
Also, do know that the Tiananmen protests wasn't the only time China killed some of its citizens...

Re:Google and Xinhua

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, those 64,000 Iraqis were liberated (from their horrible lives). FREEDOM!

Re:Google and Xinhua

[suzerain]

If you think CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, et al. (choose your news source of choice) are not spewing propaganda, you have the kind of naïveté that a 9 year-old girl could only hope to aspire to. Everybody's got an agenda, man...

If you want something more closely resembling the truth, then try getting your news from people who have no real stake in the outcome. It seems to me that a critical thinker would actually read stuff from many sides, and then maybe make some kind of decision about what he believes and doesn't.

But that's just me.

Re:Google and Xinhua

[Webmasterguy]

Said the dinosaur to the meteorite Webmasterguy
http://www.seowebsiteadvice.com/

The "communications revolution" goes on

[Whuffo]

As the current equivalents of buggy whip and button hook manufacturers, media companies that deliver their product as a physical artifact are dying. They won't go quickly or easily, and they'll fight in every way they can to hold on to their past glories.

But the world turns and the new replaces the old. Such is how it always has been and always will be; try to feel just a little sorry (if you can) for those who become irrelevant in tomorrow's world. One day, it'll be your own chosen career or industry that slips below the horizon.

Even the (rightfully) hated RIAA and MPAA are simply trying every angle they can in hopes of propping up their dying organizations for a little longer. The damage they do as they thrash around in their death throes will take years to clean up - but they will die, and the mess will be cleaned up.

Against this background, why be surprised that some newspapers think that Google should pay them for the privelege of indexing their web pages? If they could make that pig fly, they could compensate for the loss in subscription revenues for - maybe another year or so. Google chooses not to pay, and chooses rightly. These companies are doomed and there's nothing for Google or anyone else to gain by delaying their demise.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Opportunist]

Umm... maybe variety in reporting?

If independent news pages, who depend on the revenue of ads and sponsoring, cannot cover their costs anymore, they will have to go. The large news media still have their revenue from good ol' newspaper or other offline publications, so they will survive.

I wouldn't call it a good development to return to the pre-internet state, where you have a handful of newspapers to pick from that write essentially the same 'cause they belong to the same business group.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

Whuffo, you really need to look outward rather than at your own navel when making an argument. You are correct that certain industries become irrelevant; unfortunately, it is often the better marketing of a replacement, rather than the better quality, which drives this, and consumers end up getting less for more.

To begin, it is only the geek (and even then, not the majority geek) who prefers to read from an electronic device. I've been playing with computers since I was six and the printed newspaper/book wins hands down against the CRT, laptop, tablet PC, PDA, projector, clay tablet for ease of use. There are so many reasons why I don't want to replace my collection of hardcopy - of touchable, annotatable, foldable, hold-cunningly-with-4-pages-open-at-once-able, read-in-bath-able, never-worry-about-bit-rot-or-electromagnetic-storm s-able, instantly accessable, never-crashable, hardly-thievable, beautiful paper! And no, electronic paper does not cut it, because almost every way that it's not real paper, is a point off from my list of desires.

As for the whole media rights thing, well, yes, "anti-circumvention" is a pile of lobbied bullcrap, but Christ, what happened to being able to shove a VHS in the VCR or a cassette in the deck and press Record?

Against this background, why be surprised that some newspapers think that Google should pay them for the privelege of indexing their web pages?

Because unlike Google, which just sits on its fat ass making billions off other people's content, the people who produce e.g. the newsbreaking pictures put their lives on the line going out into some of the most dangerous areas of the world; those who write accounts that move a nation spend months collecting evidence, interacting undercover with undesirables who would quickly eliminate them if they knew what was up. Because a good journalist is a life-risking hero, while no Google founder, employee or shareholder comes close even producing any content at all, let alone putting his life at risk.

Google is a strong-arm bully, and its argument is no more than, "We are rich, we are powerful, we have no moral respect for the work that you do, so we will do this and profit from it; if you don't like it, consider yourself removed." The problem is not that it removes those who complain, the problem is that it dares use their work in the first place, instead of employing an explicit opt-in method - but that, like Wikipedia originally planning to have a "peer reviewed" rather than "anyone can write shit" method, would create quality, consensus and fairness, rather than easy content and easy profit.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[bytesex]

Essentially, your argument boils down to what people have been saying about the dumbing down of news as well - people like it that way. Lots of people find Google attractive and fast, and they use it, in the same way that people like news about cats in trees and don't want to know about what's really going on. In spite of there being reporters producing hard-won content, they like it the easy way; content producers be damned. But you forget that a) no content-producer is forced into the game, and b) content-producers have always had other ways of generating revenue, even online. Newspapers as material will continue to be produced for quite a while - even as they'll have to move into different markets (cheaper editions for the short run, bigger editions weekly or monthly) to keep afloat. But also, as a large portion of what keeps them afloat - an online section for the day to day affairs. That can't cost much, so it'll all look like it just came off of Reuters, AP, AFP and such, and the interviews and analysis will have to wait until the weekend.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

the loss in subscription revenues

The subscriptions are mostly relevent for their numbers in that it is a selling point to gain advertisers. The newspapers use their distribution counts and more specific demographics on their customers to sell space in their paper for advertisements, which is a much larger source of income for them then subscriptions are. Registration online or any subscriber service is probably more of a set up to track their viewers demographics then anything else, barring their bean counters just being out of touch with reality of course. Basically all of this is just another case of Marketing fouling up the works to increase their budget.

Of course providing online content for "free" also probably offends the reporters as they can no longer say "people pay to read what I write". From the publisher's standpoint "good reporting" sells newspapers and newspaper sales figures sell advertising. The reporters need to learn to be happy in the way many on the web writers and reporters are in that people willingly seek out their writing and if someone paying them to do that writing its all the better, course some papers failed to award their "view" champs or effectively obtain two-way agreement that what went into newsprint from the writers could go on the web too.

Change is as you say inevitable and people need to adapt to it, but not all will see the path in the same way. The internet has been called the Information SuperHighway, like real highways its always under construction and the road is not always wide enough or smooth enough. When a highway is built you not only have to worry about the obstacles you must remove, tunnel through or bridge over, you have to deal with every person on the chosen path and hope that eminant domain isn't used too often or does too much harm. With the government and businesses becoming increasing involved the internet may well resemble the construction of the US transcontinental railroads, which did a great deal of good and brought a great amount of harm. We are already missing the days when the pioneers ran things here.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you indexed a billion pages and handled 10 million queries before breakfast, right? Anyone can do that...

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[alba7]

The problem is not that it removes those who complain, the problem is that it dares use their work in the first place, instead of employing an explicit opt-in method [...]

Ever heard of the Robots Exclusion Standard colloquially called robots.txt?

If you don't care to learn the ways of the new age then you should rightfully go extinct.

- but that, like Wikipedia originally planning to have a "peer reviewed" rather than "anyone can write shit" method, would create quality, consensus and fairness, rather than easy content and easy profit.

Well, your comment is a just a piece of uninformed, biased drivel. Perhaps some uninformed and ignorant readers will fall for it. Though I don't think that anybody ever succesfully using Google or Wikipedia will like being insulted by the established media.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

No, and neither did any human at Google. But I (or any other fairly competent geek) can apply and adapt any number of techniques used for "searching for stuff in free text" that have been applied since the '50s, or since 1993-4 for the Web in particular. Probably don't quite have the required level of capital for hardware or marketing to give a popular index of the whole web (nor do most other fairly competent geeks), and I guess I'm not a businessman.

But, as with Microsoft, it's those qualities which set Google apart, not that of producing good content, which brings us back from the strawman to the original argument.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[heinousjay]

Tell me, is everything you can't do simple?

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? I've successfully written and implemented search engines for intranet and Internet sites. It is not a hard problem, and each time I coughed up figures to guesstimate the hardware required and the responsiveness if it were scaled up to indexing the whole Internet. Sorry, writing a decent search engine is an undergraduate-level challenge because the very much alive horse of searching has been flogged ad inf by academia, and most high quality graduates could tackle it with ease and while providing their own incremental improvements.

As for the tough cookie... never said that marketing and business acumen was easy, and Google shine at both, but I sure ain't going to cheerlead a company on those bases. As do Microsoft, for that matter, although they have produced far more to further the PC industry to date.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of the Robots Exclusion Standard colloquially called robots.txt?

Yes, thanks, been writing web pages since 1995 and been employing this unofficial standard on all my web sites as a technical convenience; didn't realise it was a moral or philosophical message that by default aggregators should be able to profit from the hard work of content producers without offering compensation, and then whine when it's asked for. But then I didn't realise a DHCP offer was a legally binding contract between two humans until reading all those "reasons why I'm entitled to free lunch^Wwifi" posts here a few days ago. Next in the series of "why tools need anthropomorphising too", am I to learn that people don't kill people, but guns do?

If you don't care to learn the ways of the new age then you should rightfully go extinct.

If you don't care to respect the life-risking hard work of others, if you prefer to cheerlead a large corporation because it holds more clout, whose main contribution to the world is realising that 1995-era web pages look better than cluttered 2000-era web pages, then you deserve exactly the America you're getting.

Though, to tackle your argument directly for a moment, if the "ways of the new age" were a boot stomping on my face, applying your line of reasoning concludes that I should adapt to the wishes of the boot or "rightfully go extinct".

I don't think that anybody ever succesfully using Google or Wikipedia will like being insulted by the established media.

I successfully use Wikipedia for looking up trivia and to retrieve lists of external references, the two places it can shine (Wikitruth and its forums are good for demonstrating what I already know in my fields of study: that Wikipedia is woefully inaccurate, waffly and unstable); I successfully use Google for general keyword searches quite frequently, as I don't expect any organisation with sufficient hardware to fall down too hard tackling that problem.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[pairo]

How would opt in create better content?

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[alba7]

If you don't care to respect the life-risking hard work of others, if you prefer to cheerlead a large corporation because it holds more clout, whose main contribution to the world is realising that 1995-era web pages look better than cluttered 2000-era web pages, then you deserve exactly the America you're getting.

I can certainly agree with this paragraph. Only that I'm thinking of Fox News, CNN and all the other "respectable" media that had nothing more to offer than cheerleading when GWB invaded Iraq. Propably people deserve nothing better when they put up with this pulp. But then I also see no reason to pay premium prices for that.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

How could opt in create better content?

Humans in general are more inclined to work better when treated as valuable contributors who have a right to a voice on the product of their labours, rather than tools for profit who are to be assumed to allow whatever fits in with the whims of the 800lb gorillas. Productive humans simply like being treated as individuals with the ability to freely trade.

Moreover, because computers do not produce imaginative content, instead only organising it by primitive rules, 100,000 sources of automated aggregation will drown out worthwhile reports on newsworthy events. Since it is easier to write stories about a piece of toast shaped like the Virgin Mary or a three-paragraph rant about the latest explosion on the Iraq war, there will be thousands of such contending against one or two pieces of excellent research.

Google is fostering the idea - like its philosophical companion Wikipedia - that all contributors are equal, except the employees/administrators, who have the power to add/remove unilaterally in the case of Wikipedia, and to tweak an algorithm to effectively show/hide items with particular properties in the case of Google. But a human without specialist knowledge applied competently will not make a good job selecting worthy news articles, even worse if he farms the job to a computer algorithm.

This wouldn't matter if people weren't so damn lazy and saw these limitations in Google's news aggregation service, preferring to go out and hunt for information on newsworthy events to understand about the world - from web sites, from print, from involved individuals, from related organisations, and sometimes even by going there. But they don't, and meanwhile, Google's just making it worse.

Opt-in would allow respectable news organisations to negotiate with Google on resolving some of these issues before they accept inclusion in a service whose ultimate aim is profit-making for Google; as it is they have faced a fait accompli, where they would either have to team up with all other big players and make a move together, or risk criticism and lost exposure... simply because one company doesn't see that it is moral to offer compensation to firms when you are profiting from their content.

(See my other post on the difference between regarding robots.txt as a technical convenience/advisory and a moral sanction; even so, Google News is not Google Search - the former deviates far from the type of general search engine that robots.txt traditionally covers.)

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Dan Ost]

The newspapers that actually produce content will do fine. It's the newspapers that regurgitate the AP stories that are screwed.

If anything, Google is encouraging variety in reporting.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[pairo]

By opt-in you mean 'pay a large sum of money for having its still crappy content displayed'. No, thanks.

Re:The "communications revolution" goes on

[Anonymous Coward]

Only that I'm thinking of Fox News, CNN and all the other "respectable" media that had nothing more to offer than cheerleading when GWB invaded Iraq.

I entirely agree with this, and I think Google's methodology contributes to this problem. To explain...

These may be mainstream, but respectable they ain't ;-). They are popular because they are easy to access, in your face, often telling people what they'd like to hear - but not necessarily detailed, insightful, logical or relevant! They act in some ways like the results of a convenient Google click/search - and that's really the point I address in another of my responses to this whole overly-long thank-goodness-its-a-holiday-in-England-today thread.

Google is removing the reader responsibility for critical analysis of news and judicious selection of sources even further, by aggregating from a thousand random sources and ranking by a primitive algorithm. I say primitive because I doubt it has the critical reasoning skills of an educated human expert to compare the detail of various articles and select for you the best researched journalism.

If you support good journalism and the journalists who write it, don't support services which rank journalism without taking account of whether it is good or not (or in any way which lacks full disclosure, really), nor those which make great profit from including excerpts/photos without making a courteous request at the very least. A polite letter sometimes does wonders :-).

(I could probably make some vague comparison with general search engines and how success has become a matter of whether your page is optimised for their page ranking algorithm rather than the quality of your site - it's certainly a problem - but I'll leave it for another day ;-) ).

Looks like a chess game

[Anonymous Coward]

Google saw two moves ahead. Maybe more companies should hire Ph.Ds so they can avoid reconsidering all the time.

If a tree falls, but Google doesn't index it...

[Nymz]

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If a webpage is published online, and Google doesn't index it, does it still get found?

Re:If a tree falls, but Google doesn't index it...

[Opportunist]

I don't know the answer to the first one. But not being indexed by Google means your page impressions will suffer. Certainly people will still find you. Google is not a 100% monopoly. And nobody could keep me from displaying the link to my buddies and tell them "look, Google doesn't want you to see that".

But overall, I'd guess the hit would be considerable. Unless of course it becomes public enough that Google doesn't want you to see X's page, 'cause then pretty much every media outlet will cover the story and link you that way...

Re:If a tree falls, but Google doesn't index it...

[bytesex]

If I told you a circle is a square, can it still be round ?

Re:If a tree falls, but Google doesn't index it...

[Nymz]

From parent poster's sig

If a bear shits in the woods, and there's nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound ?

I can't tell you if it made a sound, but I bet I could find it with Google maps.

Re:If a tree falls, but Google doesn't index it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this would've been better: If a webpage is published online, and Google doesn't index it, does it actually exist?

They should be paying Google

[EzInKy]

Look, like most I just don't have time to visit a couple of hundred sites to keep up on things. I want headlines and leads with enough information to let me know whether or not it is worth the effort to visit the news source. They should be thanking Google for providing the opportunity to garner more readers and subsequently increase their ad revenue.

Re:They should be paying Google

[suv4x4]

[They should be paying Google]

Look, like most I just don't have time to visit a couple of hundred sites to keep up on things. I want headlines and leads with enough information to let me know whether or not it is worth the effort to visit the news source. They should be thanking Google for providing the opportunity to garner more readers and subsequently increase their ad revenue.

You're biased. They should be paying Google just as much as Google should pay them.

Google isn't a charity organisation, there's no need for anyone to thank them. They are in this business to profit from other people's content. If there's no content, there's no Google. If there aren't search engines, the content can't be found.

The balance in this relationship is closer to the middle than strongly going on either side.

Re:They should be paying Google

[Anonymous Coward]

"Look, like most I just don't have time to visit a couple of hundred sites to keep up on things. I want headlines and leads with enough information to let me know whether or not it is worth the effort to visit the news source."

It looks to me that YOU should be paying Google. You're the one getting the useful service.

Re:They should be paying Google

[EzInKy]

It looks to me that YOU should be paying Google. You're the one getting the useful service.


I pay Google for its services the same way as I pay for other advertising supported media services.

Re:They should be paying Google

[innocent_white_lamb]

You could get it "free" if you wish.

Re:They should be paying Google

[Anonymous Coward]

You're biased. They should be paying Google just as much as Google should pay them.

No, hes being logical and sane. Internet was, and will hopefully never be the closed-pay-per-view that Microsoft and other companies envisioned while volunteers created something that can really connect everyone - called the Internet.

Should Google pay EVERY website owner on the internet, just because they got rich on a search-engine, something NOBODY before them managed to pull off? Should every indexing service / search engine have to do the same?

Google did great things and moved searching into an easier and more accurate era. Theyre continuing to make new stuff nobody else did before them. Theyre not making much money off these news, its just one out of many things theyre doing.

The REAL issue is wether Google should pay to index stuff on the internet which is free to download for anyone. Thankfully, we have laws like the copyright law and fair use-laws, that states it is all good to make excerpts and index stuff. Google cache may be in the gray area, but morally I see no problems with it as it is not claiming to be an original art - but rather pointing to the site and providing a needed service. The service Google is providing is also good for everyone, AND _free_ to use.

Think about this.

Then think about that a simple robots.txt file is enough to stop Google from indexing your content, so there are no real victims here. You will realize this is just a failing businessmodel demanding handouts in the wrong place.

Its the News agencies job to work out a proper businessmodel, not Google. If they cant make money, it would really be COMMUNISTIC to demand sponsorship! Hah, thatll get your attention ;*)

Can't they get anything right?

[edittard]

To them, it was obvious that the Belgium group had agreed to settle

Belgium: (n) A country, just to the North of France.
Belgian: (a) Of, from, or pertaining to said country. (n) An inhabitant or citizen thereof.

Re:Can't they get anything right?

[dodongo]

That's a totally legitimate construction. What's your problem? "The US group has agreed..." it's totally fine.

Re:Can't they get anything right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the same thing. You wouldn't call Fiat "an Italy car manufacturer", or Danone "a France food group". Well, perhaps you would...

Think about what you are saying.

[WindBourne]

Why would you sue Google in the first place? Perhaps because you are not as high up in the rankings as you believe that you should be? That is pretty much the ONLY reason why you would sue. So, assume that you then sue and Google de-lists you? So what? You are no worse off. However, to the best of my knowledge, Google has not de-listed anybody for suing them. OTH, if you sue them AND INSIST on being paid or Google not using your content, well, you are going to be de-listed. After all, Google can not pay everybody for doing their work for them. That is essentially what is happening with these companies. Then they find out that Google was HELPING them, not hurting them. Personally, I hope that Google will tell these companies to bugger off. Let them perish. To Google's credit, they have not been evil (just me in my thought).

And as far as being able to dictate, I fear Google far less than I do MS. Google has done no evil, where MS has been nothing but. The real issue is that Google can be toppled MUCH easier than MS will be. MS is losing ground on their OS-Office monopoly, but that is a very hard one to break. Even now, it will take Sun (and the OSS community) to do more work on OO to break the MS monopoly. As it is, Apple, Linux, and even Solaris (way to go schwartz) are making in-roads on the desktop.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[suv4x4]

Google has done no evil, where MS has been nothing but.

Hm, what a black-white stance. Oh wait, I get it, it's because of the slogan, right?
Heh. Kids. When will you grow up.

Google is so huge right now, you'll find people with all sorts of agenda inside. And the funny things is, many of them, at all levels, worked at Microsoft at some point. Some of them worked in Apple. Some of the people in Apple worked in Google. Some of the people in Microsoft worked in Apple or Google.

A corporation has no face. But, if it makes you feel better, you can keep putting faces on it. It makes it all so much simpler...

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Opportunist]

How about 2 other reasons: First of all, the one that the news agency appearantly saw, i.e. that Google is "stealing" their content.

And second, how about you not enjoying the idea of Google keeping your outdated pages in Cache?

I'm sure, with a bit of pondering, one could come up with a few more reasons why they might not enjoy Google, and sue.

And I'd really love to hear how you'd plan to "topple" Google, should the need arise. I don't trust Google. But then, I don't trust any company that has a de facto monopoly position. No matter whether they abused it in the past.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[WindBourne]

Oh, I did not say that I trust Google. But so far, they have not been evil (excluding the china deal).

As to them having my data in cache, great. I say go for it. It means that it is one more way to reach my site. Likewise, they can use my content if it brings me more users. That is the name of the game, right? The funny thing is that most businesses and content developers would gladly give access to content if it brought them more customers.

So, you want to topple Google? Well, it is possible to do right now. The first thing is, that you need to get content. In addition, you need to direct traffic to your search engine. Of course, that will mean getting all the browsers to use you, not Google. But doing that would appear to be difficult, right? Wrong.

Here is something that I have been thinking of doing. Apache is the main webserver in http space (and I believe in https space). But one of the things that it lacks is a GOOD search engine. But you could easily create a module whose only purpose is to re-direct a search to some other search mechanism. The way that I have been thinking of doing this, is to allow URL like http://host/search. And allow for sub dirs to be append to this (http://host/search/data/abcd when you were originally in http://host/data/abcd). This module could call a local search engine or a remote one. By default, when apache is installed, the search mechanism would then look at a file and randomly pick a search engine. If the installer wants to override, they can. They can pick a different remote search engine or they could install a local one (useful for doing a DB set-up). So what advantage would this have? It would allow for == considerations by web-servers for sending data around. From this point, you need to have a good engine, but at least you would have a fighting chance. Without it, you are pissing in wind by trying to convince the end-users to switch. I have even thought of several other approachs to how to beat Google. It is Possible. Beating MS with their illegal monopoly is the tough one. That requires exactly what is occuring; Lots of work over a LONG period of time by the industry. No one company can take them down. Sadly, they will remain an evil company.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[DrEldarion]

How about 2 other reasons: First of all, the one that the news agency appearantly saw, i.e. that Google is "stealing" their content. Robots.txt

And second, how about you not enjoying the idea of Google keeping your outdated pages in Cache? Robots.txt

If you want to be listed in Google, you play by their rules. If you don't agree to those rules, you block them. It's simple.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Alt321]

"And as far as being able to dictate, I fear Google far less than I do MS. Google has done no evil, where MS has been nothing but."

With respect, I think that's short-sighted. While MS has done some shitty things ... I know where I stand with them. With Google, they present this rosy vision to all - and almost all fall before them.

What concerns me is that Google has far more potential to do "evil" now than MS. I fear that. Now, while this might sound alarmist, history suggests otherwise.

When everything is benign, customers/humanity has allowed things to happen as long as said customers/humanity are benefiting. And right now, we are. But things change. And when they do, they will have set the framework up in their favour.

Sorry, but anyone who thinks that Google is nothing more than just another corporate entity is in for a surprise. Google and MS may as well be blood brothers.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has done no evil? Except for getting those poor Chinese bloggers executed, I guess.

Don't be naive. On top of everything else, you have two insanely rich young men running the show. It's only a matter of time before they are corrupted by power.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[xtracto]

How about 2 other reasons: First of all, the one that the news agency appearantly saw, i.e. that Google is "stealing" their content.
Robots.txt

LoL *chuckle*... Everytime someone comes up with that "the search engine is stealing my content" thing I cant help but laugh really hard... this "web page" content stealing is akin to someone paying $10,000 to put one of these huge ads panels in the street containing their "content" and then bitching because people *can* see it.

If you do not want your content to be seen then for gods sake do not put it in the internet...

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[WindBourne]

Google had NOTHING to do with that. That was a pure Yahoo and MS play. That was well documented in the news. But I said elsewhere that the downfall will be either their replacement or their change.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[WindBourne]

Amazing what happens when you are a monopoly and can do interesting things with a tied product. In particular, office is pre-loaded. If you really wish to see how things run, run office on wine AND as well as OO. That is an eye-opener about the tying together. Office is the Hindenberg while OO is Apollo.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Alt321]

Actually, for the record, it's not. And no, I didn't.
Have a nice day though.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Snaller]

"Hm, what a black-white stance. Oh wait, I get it, it's because of the slogan, right?
Heh. Kids. When will you grow up."

They did kid, which is why they don't just accept your spin.

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Kalriath]

Google has done no evil, where MS has been nothing but. Bullshit. Google is the company that wants to build such a massive privacy-be-damned database that they can answer the question "What should I do tomorrow?" They even admitted this in a press conference (my reference is http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5 &objectid=10441661, however this was apparently syndicated by Independent News unless Independent actually means "not syndicated")

Any company that seeks to know so much about someone that they are able to dictate what they do is VERY MUCH EVIL. I dunno about you, but I read that and immediately changed my default search engine (and firewalled Googles and Doubleclicks ad servers, as well as Googles Analytics server)

Re:Think about what you are saying.

[Kalriath]

Ah yes, Flamebait. Because everyone knows that one cannot question The Almighty Google. Get over it, Google can do wrong.

The groupthink around here is fucking pathetic.

Failing to adapt

[sufehmi]

The only constant is change. Apparently, some still doesn't know this.

The old media who fail to adapt will be driven to extinction. The traffic driver now is Google, in the future it may be something else, and so on.

There's a good example here of a new mass media company in Indonesia. They provide the news for free, with RSS feeds and so on. But instead of just that, as many old media company trying to move into Internet --- they also have a web store, ad-service via SMS, resell their incoming traffic, sell web-development & consultancy services,
sell exclusive contents paid by simple premium SMS, successfully built an online community AND capitalize on it to make their Web 2.0 websites successful, and many other creative inventions.

The old media on Internet have very high "hit-and-run" traffic. People came, read the news, and went away.
The new media company I mentioned above, however, is able to capitalize on their incoming traffic; people will linger on for longer, actually do transactions with them; bottom line, more revenue streams.

Again, this is not the fault of Google. The fault is at those who fail to adapt.

"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[reporter]

The conflict between the newspapers and Google is due to financial issues. With nearly 100% of news being free, newspaper revenue is declining rapidly. The newspaper companies just want Google to pay them for the free news.

However, Google has no legal obligation to do so. Google is not causing the newspapers to lose money. Google is just a pointer to the news. The news organizations are the ones who actually provide the news -- for free.

So, the solution is obvious. The "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) has already implemented the solution: charge for news. The readership of the WSJ has declined little since the start of the Internet Age. Revenue has also been relatively stable.

Now, look at the "Los Angeles Times". Every bit of news and opinion at the "Times" is free. Why would anyone subscribe to the "Times" when she can get the news for free?

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[Kadin2048]

So, the solution is obvious. The "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) has already implemented the solution: charge for news. The readership of the WSJ has declined little since the start of the Internet Age. Revenue has also been relatively stable.

Now, look at the "Los Angeles Times". Every bit of news and opinion at the "Times" is free. Why would anyone subscribe to the "Times" when she can get the news for free?

Bingo. I think you've also touched, indirectly, on the bigger issue: original content. If you don't have any original content, then you can't well charge admission! Papers that basically just re-run the same wire service reports as everyone else, can't adopt the WSJ's business model, because there are lots of other, cheaper (free) sources for the same thing.

What we are about to see, is a big contraction in the newspaper market. Honestly I don't think this is a bad thing. It's been a long time in coming. Most newspapers -- and I'm not talking about the LA Times here (I don't have a clue about them) -- have long been a 'news dissemination' service, and not a real 'news reporting' service. They don't really make any content themselves, beyond pretty basic local stuff that a smart highschool Junior could write up. Everything else is just wire service stuff. These are the papers that aren't going to make it, or are going to have to radically change shape in order to survive.

The Internet makes the dissemination of information relatively cheap and easy. What it doesn't do is change the cost of creating the material originally (well, in some cases it might, but not as dramatically as it affects the distribution side). If you're nothing but an information distributor, you're in trouble. But if you're an information creator, then you still have something you can market.

Everyone talks about newspapers going under, but you never hear anyone (seriously) talking about the AP or UPI going under. They're not going to, and neither are the big papers that actually do some serious reporting and content-creation -- although they might have to become more like wire services themselves, less "newspapers" and more 'information brokers' or 'content assemblers' (taking lots of raw data and presenting it in a format that people find pleasing and useful, and are incidentally willing to pay for).

There's no shortage of demand for news, and that means there's always going to be money for the people who are really in the core of the business. It's the ancillary stuff that's going to go down, and well it should.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[rm999]

"Now, look at the "Los Angeles Times". Every bit of news and opinion at the "Times" is free. Why would anyone subscribe to the "Times" when she can get the news for free?"

My friend has an online account to the Economist, and offered me his username/password. I love the Economist, and chose to subscribe to the print edition. Why? Not for moral reasons (that's a nice side effect), but because I like to read the newspaper in print. I don't want to stare at a computer more than I have to, and it's much harder to find what you are interested in. The economist is a weekly newspaper, I can only imagine how much more pronounced this is with a daily. Imagine looking through 50 articles on the computer every day

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[value_added]

The conflict between the newspapers and Google is due to financial issues. With nearly 100% of news being free, newspaper revenue is declining rapidly.

Whether (or how) the online presence of newspapers generates profits is the subject of the article. It's a separate and distinct issue from the declining revenues of newspapers, which, for the most part, are a decline in classifieds revenue. Declining circulations play a role, but to a far less extent than you'd like to believe. Newspapers are still very very profitable (more so than most businesses), but lack the increasing revenues that Wall Street demands. Hardly surprising that the LA Times, for example, is now reverting to being privately held.

The newspaper companies just want Google to pay them for the free news.

Vaguely correct for ambiguous values of correct. You're talking about "access" to news stories. News isn't free. It comes from reporters who are paid to investigate, research and write stories. Most reporting is still done by newspapers. Even broadcast (television) news is a product of newspaper reporting. If newspapers can't afford to pay their reporting and editorial staff, everyone suffers. In the extreme cases, you either end up with "local reporting" (consisting mostly of puff pieces on insignicant issues), or recyled headlines from wire services (who are also under similar budgetary concerns).

If you can't see where this is heading, I'd suggest watching a few hours of celebrity news programming (consisting mostly of stock footage) on TV and asking yourself whether you feel informed about the world you live in. Or, if you're up to it, ask the Really Big Question of how a democracy can function without an informed electorate.

As to the subject of whether the newspapers deserve some cut from Google's advertising revenues, well, no. I don't think they do. If that was your point, then we're in agreement.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[grrrl]

Imagine looking through 50 articles on the computer every day

Try RSS - I look through far more than 50 articles a day, but only have to read in-depth those that catch my attention. The benefit of a good RSS reader (I use Vienna) being that articles are only listed in one place (not dynamically all over the page like some newspaper sites) and you know what you've looked at (by changing the article status to read - eg like email).

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[UnanimousCoward]

Maybe I'm being a luddite, but I want my kids to have access to a physical newspaper at the breakfast table w/o having them having to go online. So, even though I can get the NYT for free online, I'll pay for it to have the tree-killing version too. The non-luddite in me also reaps the benefits of access to NYT historical content which is available to me since I take the tree-killing version...

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[yelvington]

Everyone talks about newspapers going under, but you never hear anyone (seriously) talking about the AP or UPI going under.

UPI went bankrupt years ago and has changed hands several times. The company that now owns the UPI brand actually is an agent of the Unification Church (also known as "the Moonies"). Hardly any newspapers use UPI these days.

The Associated Press is a cooperative owned and controlled by American newspapers. The AP has gone through a massive restructuring over the last several years as it scrambles to adjust to the realities of news distribution in an age when distribution is near-free. Demand for its core services from its owner-members is declining as those newspapers themselves shift from global to local content focus. Many editors of smaller newspapers are contemplating dropping the AP entirely. They're not ready to do that, but they're thinking about it.

As for the Wall Street Journal's economic model, it's not relevant to a discussion of general-circulation newspapers.

WSJ sells essential business information to subscribers who don't pay with their own money (they typically use company expense accounts). No general-interest local newspaper anywhere in the world has been able to make such a model work in its own market. Local civic news may be essential to the function of a democracy, but that doesn't mean anybody wants to pay for it.

Old models and old assumptions -- such as those advocated by "reporter" -- do not work today. Newspapers that do not change their fundamental approach to coverage are losing audience to other media choices that didn't exist 20 years ago. Attempting to charge for content only accelerates that loss.

I don't mean that newspapers are doomed, but those that fail to change and adapt to the new environment are doomed. The ones that adapt can thrive. But the necessary changes are not small and a lot of people -- including many older subscribers -- aren't going to like those changes.

Large newspapers are at highest risk, as they are unable for economic and cultural reasons to cover the kind of hyperlocal news that might rescue their falling readership numbers. As their circulations sag they become perilously close to catastrophic failure of their mass-media business model. You can't run a mass medium if you don't have mass.

Small newspapers, neighborhood-level newspapers, are extraordinarily strong. And there's significant growth in free-circulation newspapers both in the U.S. and international markets.
So this is not a problem of print versus electronic distribution. Print still works. But old assumptions about content and business models do not work.

I do this for a living. I'm a strategist for a newspaper company, and I do not advocate blocking Google from spidering local content. I do advocate blocking the spiders from wire feeds, which we have done for years using a robots.txt directive.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[honkycat]

In addition to that sort of reason, I simply enjoy having time to read the newspaper while not rotting my brain on the internet. I spend too much time in front of a terminal or laptop as it is. Having the paper in the living room is better for a break. Plus, having it arrive on my doorstep gives me an incentive to look through it, even sections I may not really be interested in. When I had no newspaper subscription, I tended not to read as regularly or thoroughly. Finally, my baby son really likes the noise it makes when he rustles and tears the pages and shakes them around, and that alone is worth the buck a day or whatever it is...

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[Dun Malg]

Now, look at the "Los Angeles Times". Every bit of news and opinion at the "Times" is free. Why would anyone subscribe to the "Times" when she can get the news for free? The LA Times is notorious here for telemarketing. For years we've had to put up with repeated sales calls offering us "great deals" on that horrid rag, and no argument short of hanging up would get the tenacious phone-mill slave off your phone. Until now, that is. When you tell them "I read it online, for free", they simply have no answer beyond "Oh....OK....thank you for your time". Victory at last.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[fermion]

WSJ has a specific niche and a rather unique business model. It is as much as fashion statement as a news source. Yes it does have original stories, and the ever important 'how to manage your second home by buying at Wal Mart story'. But the key thing is that I have never seen a MBA who wants to taken seriously without it. Subscriptions to the journal are a cost of doing business, a deductible expense.

In any case, the pure subscription model is on it's way out. USA Today has a larger subscription base, even with free online content. The NYT subscriptions are on the rise. The journal is the only top three that is falling. Most newspapers are meeting the new generation head on and altering the business models to meet new realities. The Journal survives only the inertia, and in a generation will probably be a shell of it's past self. I can tell you that I have observed the Journal is nothing compared to what it was 20 years ago.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[The Warlock]

Maybe I'm missing something, but how is it "rotting your brain on the Internet" if you're reading the same exact article, with the same words and everything, that's in the print edition?

It's not like Magic Stupid Rays get emitted straight from the Internet and into your brain, despite what the BBC may say.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[CodeBuster]

They don't really make any content themselves, beyond pretty basic local stuff that a smart highschool Junior could write up. Everything else is just wire service stuff.

Even in that area these regional newspapers, like the times, are under attack by an ever increasing number of smaller local publications that specialize in quality local reporting only to the exclusion of national content for precisely the reasons that you and the grandparent state, there is little no money in simply reprinting the AP and Reuters wire service stories. Take Los Angeles for example, which is pretty large city with many distinct regions and districts. You now have small papers, say 16 pages total or less per paper, printing local stories with local ads in a nich which is too small to interest newspapers like the Times (who cannot focus on every special niche area of Los Angeles) but hurts them none the less because people grab these (often free) small rags for their local fix and use Google News for the national wire stories. The newspaper business is heading for a big crunch and everyone can see it, even Warren Buffet and Jim Crammer both agree on that one...and how often do *those* two guys agree on anything (for those of you who don't know they are pretty much polar opposites in the investing world).

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[rolfwind]

Maybe I'm being a luddite, but I want my kids to have access to a physical newspaper at the breakfast table w/o having them having to go online. So, even though I can get the NYT for free online, I'll pay for it to have the tree-killing version too. The non-luddite in me also reaps the benefits of access to NYT historical content which is available to me since I take the tree-killing version..

I think you are.

In twenty years, e-paper will have taken over, today models are not bad - Sony's and IRex's. Just not cheap enough - about $600-700. Think about how much better and cheaper it will be in 20 years.

Your kids will be reading a physical epaper at breakfast. It will be updated wirelessly. Not only that, they can locally access all their previous epapers, up to when their subscription started. On the same thing, they have all their school books, casual books for fun, comics, zines, etcetera. Little Johnny also found a way to stash some playboys on there. For the articles.

News services adopt it because the cost of delivery drops to nil. Schools adopt it because they can have some books free (good books about some subjects are public domain or under a free license). Before they would have to have selected a book being currently published. Most likely expensive. And it saves a lot of trees.

And you get access to the NYT historical content.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[honkycat]

I was being a little silly there, but after staring at screens all day, my brain gets really tired and reading printed words is a relaxing change. Also, the distraction of all the other things that the internet offers is removed by not being right there.

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[JacksBrokenCode]

Also, the distraction of all the other things that the internet offers is removed by not being right there.

Apparently you haven't seen the ads in the sports section...

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[milkman_matt]

I've used the "I read it online" line to get them off of the phone too. The best was, though, when they persisted to try and sell me. They told me "well, this is more convenient because it's at your doorstep!" I told them "Well, my desk is on my way to my door, and I don't even have to open the door for that.." So they say "Yeah but with this you don't even have to turn your computer on!" So I just tell her "Look lady, if I ever really get -that- lazy, I can leave my laptop on my nightstand, wake up, open it, since it'll turn on by itself, and then read it without even leaving _BED_" I think that's the one that won it for me, those people can be -persistent-!

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[myowntrueself]

Or, if you're up to it, ask the Really Big Question of how a democracy can function without an informed electorate.

What democracy? Seriously.

The prevalent form of government 'enjoyed' in the 'western world' is not democracy -- it is 'mediacracy'.

And mediacracy is all about appropriately informing the electorate -- informing them in such a way that when it comes time to spend their 'hard-earned' vote they are subject to exactly the same sorts of influences which work so well when it comes to advertising any other commodity such as soft drinks or fast food (government being the commodity, the vote being equivalent of currency).

Re:"Wall Street Journal" is the right model.

[jasonjacks0n]

Bingo. I think you've also touched, indirectly, on the bigger issue: original content. If you don't have any original content, then you can't well charge admission! Papers that basically just re-run the same wire service reports as everyone else, can't adopt the WSJ's business model, because there are lots of other, cheaper (free) sources for the same thing.

Yep - that's because traditionally, newspapers have been in the news distribution business, as well as the news gathering business. Since distribution got so much easier, quicker, cheaper and better after the advent of widespread internet access (and Google's indexing tech), the traditional newspapers are now finding it a much less lucrative business.

While it sounds like a really good thing (for the general public) that we're able to potentially streamline and improve news distribution so dramatically, it actually has some potentially destructive side effects as well... it turns out that the news-distribution side of the business was actually subsidizing the news-gathering operation, and so as revenues have fallen, the traditional practice of "hard journalism" has suffered.

That's not the only problem with the news, of course - another big one, in the US at least, is that the corporations which run the news outlets now demand that they be highly profitable (especially the TV news operations, which are facing a lot of the same issues as the newspapers are, due to the rise of internet news), and don't see much or any "public service" type of role for the news any more... Frontline recently ran a great report on the news media, covering that and related issues in depth.

Excuse me?

[16K Ram Pack]

This is just short-sighted. "You're making money off our content, so we want a piece of that".

I had a reasonably high-ranking UK blogger link to a blog entry of mine. He even cited a bit of it. So, he entertained some readers a little. At the same time, the hyperlink saw my traffic (and my tiny adwords revenue) double for about a week after.

What I could have done is taken the same stupid attitude as the papers "stop using my content" and sat back in the satisfaction that he wouldn't be leeching off my content. He'd have maybe had less to interest his readers. But I would have lost some revenue.

Don't these people get this?

Re:Excuse me?

[SEE]

This is just short-sighted. "You're making money off our content, so we want a piece of that".

Except, of course, Google isn't making any money off Google News. Google News runs no ads.

Not to encourage such things, but...

[iamacat]

With cookies/referrer, it's possible to generate an ad intermission when a link is followed from Google for the first time in an hour or so, but not when it comes from another page on the site. Since it's transient cookies, they will not be usually blocked by the browser and if they are, well someone is going to be watching lots of ads. Couple this with robots.txt and there is no reason a newspaper needs a special deal with Google to do business as they want without losing the benefit of indexing.

Re:Not to encourage such things, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that would be a violation of Google's policies. Of course publishers are not obliged to follow those policies. But if Google were to find out about such tricks, they would remove the sites from the index.

This is like a major newspaper asking

[yeOldeSkeptic]

newstands to pay a fee to them because the presence of the newspapers attracts people to the newstands.

Maybe the managers thinking about this should just leave the media business. They don't seem to know anything about it.

Re:This is like a major newspaper asking

[pacalis]

Somewhere you forgot that news stands buy inventory.

I don't see why google shouldn't do the same.

Re:This is like a major newspaper asking

[alexgieg]

Somewhere you forgot that news stands buy inventory. I don't see why google shouldn't do the same.

I have no idea whether this is the case on other countries, but here in Brazil newsstands don't "buy" inventory in any permanent way, except in rare cases. Of course they do pay to get the newspapers and magazines in their hands to be resold, but in the end of the day (or month) the publishers accept back (and pay back) whatever wasn't sold. If nothing was sold, the newsstand owner receives back every single cent he spent.

Re:This is like a major newspaper asking

[pacalis]

I understand this to be the same here, and the same with many publishers. It's why amazon was supposed to be much more profitable than bricks and mortar stores (consolidated inventory, less transaction costs). Still newspaper stands are on the hook for invetory, either in money or in an obligation to return inventory.

But to extend the analogy to google, its not like the newspaper stands drive to the publishers, rip out some sections from a bunch of news papers, drive back to their stands and say "There's more at the news paper place!"

Slightly OT, but lets just mention all print media

[zappepcs]

I've stopped reading any print media whether it is a magazine or a newspaper. Both are unbearably slow sources of standard news articles compared to the Internet. The only print media I read anymore are those that give in-depth or otherwise insightful articles that are not reported by the up-to-the-minute-news services. Even those I tend to read electronically. There are some trade mags that publish things that just are not in the "news" so they are good... but any 'news' information is best had off the web. Google reader helps quite a bit.

Corporations DO have faces and souls

[WindBourne]

The problem is that so many of you kids today do not work in companies which want to show them. Over the decades, I have worked at various companies because I was a contract coder. I have worked at USWest Advanced Tech., Bell labs (later Avaya), IBM Watson, NASA, and HP. Prior to that, I had a different career (microbio/geneticists) in which I worked at some interesting places including C.D.C.. I can tell you that ALL of these companies/gov. had faces and souls. While it is normally tied to the top ppl, that is not always true. For example, USWest was purely a RBOC mentality until they were taken over by qwest. Likewise, My place at Bell labs became Lucent and then Avaya. As bell Labs, it had some of the best and brightest. Over time, they left. Watson labs was interesting as I started there shortly after Uncle Lou took over. ppl were nervous, but excited about a chance to get back on track. And yes, they all had a face. That was due to the TOP managment's morals. Sadly, look at HP and IBM today and you can see why so many of the top execs are keeping quiet.

Now, as to the ppl at Google coming from MS, yes, some did. Hell, some of them came from Iraq. How much influence do any of them have? NOT MUCH. The do no evil is a top down mandate. Likewise, the MS approach to win at all costs is a top down approach. That is why e-mail gets "lost". Likewise, you see MS slaes throw their weight around (still) by telling re-sellers that they will do what MS wants. MS also tells politicians that if they bring in Linux or OO, that the next policitian will be from the opposite party. That is EVIL.
Does Google do any of that? Nope. Not at this time. But if the top execs change (or perhops does not change), then they will slowly become "evil".

I disagree...

[freedom_india]

Print media may not be "hip" with latest information, but the views matter.
I subscribe to print editions of TIME and Economist purely for the joy of reading the views.
The way in which it is presented also matters, not just the bland headline stating "Lohan arrested for DUI".
I guess that's why FOX news is popular than ABC or PBS.
Secondly, a paper magazine allows me to lie down on couch or bed and read at lesuire.
Thirdly, a paper magazine has readers letters, opinion, etc., all concise in 48-pages.
Magazines may not provide latest information.
But they do present an in-depth analysis absent in news.google.com

The newspaper model is dead!

[etnu]

100, 50, 20, hell, even 10 years ago newspapers had a major problem: covering local issues was relatively clean, but covering international issues was a big problem. Outside of the big players (NY Times, Washington Post, etc.), nobody could afford to send their journalists abroad and the like. Back then, we needed the AP. We needed reuters. Today we're seeing how broken this model is. You can find the exact same article on hundreds of websites, all attributed to the same sources. The news agencies should get back to reporting local news that is relevant to their local customer base. Start assuming that your customers will get their national and international news from sources like CNN or ABC. The newspaper owners are doing what they're doing because they simply have no idea how to restructure their business model right now. If the hand-written letter was the first casualty of the internet era, the newspaper will certainly be the next.

Re:The newspaper model is dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wrong on one thing there the first casualty was pornographic magazines(just kidding you could send email before the color monitor couldnt help but be sarcastic there :)

Competitors will have to do something else

[Colin Smith]

The competition to Google won't come from the search engine space, it'll come from something which can provide a similar service but in a slightly different way. I'm guessing something like del.icio.ous or some machine learning system a maths whiz comes up with.

google and newspapers ?

[chrisranjana.com]

So will the editors and staff of newspapers pay google for their searches ?

Conflicts... Bah...

[Jugalator]

Google should just shut out the newspapers that don't want to be listed.

I don't think Google is violating any laws by posting stuff like one-sentence excerpts from sites and a link to them. They do the same on Google Web Search, and others do it to on their news search services. So I don't see a problem there. And if they remove sites that have a "personal" problem with it, they have no problem there either. Voila, dispute and headaches solved. I should become a manager.

Re:Conflicts... Bah...

[Dun Malg]

Google should just shut out the newspapers that don't want to be listed. The papers should shut themselves out (robots.txt)

The fact that they've chosen the courts rather than basic web services shows what technological idiots they are.

Google home page, javascript dependant?

[Secrity]

I just verified that my javascript was turned off and went to google.com. I didn't find that anything required javascript.

Re:Google home page, javascript dependant?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just verified that my javascript was turned off and went to google.com. I didn't find that anything required javascript.

That's the problem, you won't find it. The top bar that says Web | Images | News etc etc doesn't appear with JS off. You may get context "images" and "blogs" *after* searching, if google deems there are enough interesting related image (but it often hides it when there ARE interesting mages).

Re:Google home page, javascript dependant?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I didn't find that anything required javascript.

Did you even look?

Hint: window.gbar

Re:Google home page, javascript dependant?

[Dun Malg]

The top bar that says Web | Images | News etc etc doesn't appear with JS off. Yes it does. It appears as plain old HTML with JS off.

Better products, not mergers!

[mangu]

it'll be nice to see Yahoo and Microsoft work (or merge?) together better, so they can compete better against Google.

When Google started, the dominant search services were Altavista and Yahoo. Google didn't need to merge with anyone to completely dominate the search business, they just created a better search algorithm.

If either Microsoft or Yahoo or anyone else wants to compete better against Google, the first thing to do is to hire talented *technical* people and let them work at developing a better search engine. The bit is mightier than the chair, when the competition is open, smart programmers will always trump aggressive managers.

Internet search today is limited to literal text only. I wish I could request something by generic words and get pages containing also synonyms of those words. I wish I could request a search for technical information on the XYZ product, but exclude any advertisements. I wish I could do multimedia search. I wish I could upload a picture to Google and request a search for any pictures with the second girl from the left. I wish I could hum a song into the microphone and request a search for all the files containing that song.

There's so much to be done in search engines today, all you need to become the next Google is to implement what Google does not provide.

The opposite

[PietjeJantje]

Google links to newspaper stories that feature ads, so Google should get part of the revenue.

Reuters was just recently bought out (n/t)

[Anonymous Coward]

Reuters was just recently bought out. Would that be a hint?

Google's in the right on this one

[richardwatson]

Because Google is providing great value for readers. I always start my newsreading from Google News - it's the best place to see what's happening around the world. I had a few online papers on my list before it came along - now I'm reading news from China, Russia, Belgium, wherever.

So do right by the readers, get rewarded for it. The papers sound a bit like the music industry to me - trying to push water uphill.

Maybe they should use a different stance.

[Ant P.]

"We don't charge for indexing your content."

What about Drudge?

[krygny]

Like Google News, the Drudge Report is a news "agragator", simply linking to news sources. It's one of the most visited sites on the web, even for those who don't care for Matt Drudge's political bend. They get scoops and breaking stories posted before anyone else because visitors submit stories. Many news organization have a love-hate relationship with the site. Love the traffic, hate the politics. I used to work at the New York Times and passing through the Editorial/Journalism floors, it was not uncommon to see the Drudge Report displayed on a monitor.

if it was opt in.

[segfault_0]

If google had started this as an opt in system where you had to pay to play, these same newspapers would be signing up without a complaint and the money would be going the other way. While I agree their participation should be optional - they should consider themselves lucky to have a site boosting hits on their site by those kind of numbers for free - in any other circumstances you'd have to pay for that kind of help. Is there anything more painful to watch that old school news businesses trying to figure out the internet?

Re:if it was opt in.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah we all know the opt out solution is great, spam shows us everyday.
If it was an opt-in the newspaper could actually control what Google really has to offer.
btw....I hardly use google to find anything really relevant, all the searchs engine are clogged with advertisement, prices on stuff etc...
You find way more useful informations in forums, forums you found by rings or links in a knows website comments; adress in newspapers specialized etc...
My favorites are way more useful for informations than any search engines, and most of them were not found by search engines as well.
Site like del.icio is way more relevant than Google most of the time, because an actual human decided if the link was worth it.
And it really need a dumb one to put the result of a price comparator in his favorite, where google seems to index them all....

Most People Aren't So Open Minded

[Phat_Tony]

"[blah blah blah] has observers considering both sides of the issue"

In my experience, usually not so much.

Or in other words, "You must be new around here."

Actually, history is on my side

[WindBourne]

If you look carefully, any company with a 1 issue monopoly WILL fall. It is when they have a tied monopoly like MS does that it becomes difficult. For example, the oil company (shell oil) was broken up because they own the production, refinery, AND delivery. Likewise, Hollywood was broken up as well since they owned production AND the theaters. All of them had WAY too much control. MS is the exact same way. MS has thrown their weight around. Google has not (yet). In addition, while Google has the ability to control web searches to you, MS has total control against anybody that they want (and have show a willingness to use; stacker; Dr. Dos; Word Perfect; Lotus; Sybase; etc. ).

OTH, Google is very vulnerable. As I showed elsewhere, it is easy for one person, let alone 1 company, to take Google down. But it is impossible for 1 company, let alone 1 person to take down MS. I am not suggesting that Google will not be like MS, but at this time, they are not. In fact, at this time, they are helping to break apart the MS monopoly.

What a moron

[SEE]

"If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" Sam Zell, the new owner of the Tribune Company, asked reporters during a speech at Stanford University last month. The Tribune Company operates the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Zell didn't wait for the reporters to reply, according to The Washington Post. "Not very," he said.

Uh-huh.

Mr. Zell, have you ever looked at Google News? You'll notice something -- it doesn't run any ads. Not one. How, then, do you think Google is making money off "stealing" your content?

You're a moron, sir.

(Okay, technicality people, yes, now Google is adding news results to their "universal search". Do you really think that Google would take a major revenue hit if it reverted to the business model it had back three weeks ago?)

Re:What a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the moron, there is no ads on google news, because google news is itself the ad for GOOGLE in the first place...

Guide to Stopping Online Theft of Newspaper Conten

[newscloud]

I wrote this Billionaire's Guide to Stopping Online Theft of Newspaper Content which details the ways in which newspapers can opt out from Google and other content sharing/"thieving" technologies.

Information overload

[ghoul]

With the coming of the Internet there is too much information available and people are drowning in Information. This changes the value that newspapers can provide. Now the value of newspapers is not that they can bring news to us rather they can filter out useless news i.e. the editorial function becomes the value proposition rather than the journalistic function. When I do a Google news search I already know what I am looking for so basically I already know the news I just want details. This is not as interesting as reading a newspaper where I may come across many unrelated news items I had never even heard off. This expands my horizons. Now the newspaper doesnt need to be on paper it can be online but it needs to be an aggregate of different news articles and opinion pieces (pretty much what Slashdot is and also the reason its so popular). So if Newspapers want to survive in the future they have to become like Slashdot and superspecialize - we already have news for nerds but somebody could turn a current newspaper into news for artists or news for bankers (maybe WSJ already does that) or even a news for general man. We could even have aggregators with liberal or conservative biases and it would be very much like the early days of newspapers where a newspaper had a point of view(just like blogs). Whatever happens the traditional newspaper where you just collect information from different wire services and print it together is going to be dead soon.

Don't be silly

[Snaller]

"So, the solution is obvious. The "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ) has already implemented the solution: charge for news. The readership of the WSJ has declined little since the start of the Internet Age. Revenue has also been relatively stable.

Now, look at the "Los Angeles Times". Every bit of news and opinion at the "Times" is free. Why would anyone subscribe to the "Times" when she can get the news for free?"

Why would you subscribe to anything when you can get the news for free.

Are you running MS?

[WindBourne]

If so, then MS already knows FAR more about you than what Google is SEEKING to do. I have no issues with a company who seeks info on me. I have issues with companies who can not protect, will sell it to others (they are not actively selling it; they use it to sell spots; different issue all together), and will share it WILLINGLY with govs (Yahoo and MS in china comes to mind; I would guess that they have been willing to share the same with the US gov.).

So with the above in mind, who exactly are you using for a search engine? Because if you are with the top 10 engines, then your info is being either used, sold, or shared with govs. And if you are with any lesser engine, then you do not have info about the web.

Re:Are you running MS?

[Kalriath]

Strawman argument if ever I saw one. For a start, Google is gathering altogether too much information, and storing it for far too long. They go out of their way to acquire services with a huge userbase (i.e. craptons of peoples personal data) or pile of data (i.e. DoubleClick) so that they can build their "Total Information" strategy.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc, do not at this time do this - in fact Google is the ONLY search engine going out of its way to associate every single user with enough information to be able to tell what you will do tomorrow, or who you're going out to meet for dinner and a lay.

You claim that MS knows far more about you than Google does. You know what, that's fucking bullshit. You conspiracy theorists constantly claim it, but the truth is that Windows does not report your name, address, telephone number, sexual history, blood type, health records, that visit to the Family Planning Clinic about your "rash", and the name of your First Born child to Microsoft.

Of course, you are welcome to enjoy your Google services - just think that one day you'll go search to be greeted with "Greetings! So how was your night with Dalilah? Her last 7 partners say she's an absolute beast in the sack! (And has syphillus)"

Now it is more difficult to not get indexed

[anandsr]

Before newspapers could ask Google to remove their entry only from Google News. But now with it merged with the normal search, it will be a much worse choice. Asking Google to not index your website is now equivalent of committing hara-kiri on the net.

Oh, the Ant iUSian bullshit again.

[jotaeleemeese]

People that are servile to the current Bush administration use liberally the anti USian tag whenever they lose an argument.

If your illiterate President would have listened to the "anti Americans" many innocent lifes would have been spared and terrorism would have not worsened all around the world (the dumbsters Blair and Aznar made targets of their countries for blindly not being anti American. The other friend of the US, Silvio Berlusconni, enacted laws to avoid legal prosecuttion while still in office, those are the friends of the US ).

Re:Oh, the Ant iUSian bullshit again.

[Hal_Porter]

If your illiterate President....

He's not my President, as you'd know if you bothered to actually read what I wrote.

Why not?

[jotaeleemeese]

A proper advertising campaign outside Google may work perfectly fine.

Google is very important, but it is not the end of it all when it comes to the Internet.

Unadulterated bullshit.

[jotaeleemeese]

All companies have commercial and ethical policies about how they are going to behave in the market place.

We have enough information about MS (emails and memos leaked, legal proceedings, anecdotal and in the public domain like the recent deals with Novell, the inuendo about FOSS violating patents, etc.) that we can form a fair opinion about the kind of company MS aims to be.

We have as much information about Google.

So no, we are not kids babbling Google's press releases. We are people checking the facts and forming our opinions about these and other companies.

In my book it is tumbs up to Google, and despise bordering on hate for MS, but YMMV since you may be an MS shareholder or employee, so it may very well be that you only have beautiful things to say about MS.

I, as a former user and interested party, have little positive to say about the company (wait, they make some very good hardware. It even works with Linux out of the box).

So your answer to stat controlled news ...

[jotaeleemeese]

... is censorship.

My oh my.

There are people that truly are learning nought from history ....

Ugh.

[jotaeleemeese]

Physical media is not searchable and you can't reorganize it, cut bits and pieces and recall them easily later.

As soon as electronic paper becomes cheap to produce a thin device the size of a book will replace the print media in no time.

Re:Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Books: I search using the Contents and the Index; I don't need to reorganise because the book is already well organised; I don't need to cut-and-paste because the book is already well organised. If I want to take separate notes, I'll take separate notes, not adjust the source material, whether I find it online or offline (though I will make copious annotations *in* books, something that will be as easy to do to electronic books when they become sufficiently indistinguishable from real books that, hell, they might as well be real books).

Newspapers: More likely to see such a transition. However, my brain is able to read headlines and skim-read articles to quickly find something that interests me in a good paper, plus, you guessed, it, a good newspaper is already well organised. What is more, my interest in current affairs is not so narrow as to be definable by a keyword search. I don't need to cut-and-paste while sitting in the train in the morning; archive and recall of past news stories is a great computer application, but that's not the same task as "reading today's news".

As soon as electronic paper becomes cheap to produce a thin device the size of a book will replace the print media in no time.

Yes, and when my electronic copy is cheap enough to leave on the train for the guy next to me to read it when I'm done, I'll be sure to leave it for him. If I have to pair with the "e-reader" of my neighbour then fiddle with some sync applet, or, worse, my paper is DRM-encumbered, then.. please, forget it.

You don't understand the Web.

[jotaeleemeese]

Look, this is how it works: you put a website and people can link to it. No permission is required to link to your content.

If you don't want your content to be public there are several acknoledged mechanisms for this to happen.

If your content is public, anyone can refer to it by menas of links.

That is how the web was designed. People and companies not prepared to abide by the design rules can go and create their own network. AOL for example. See how popular that was.

Re:You don't understand the Web.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, this is how it works: you put a website and people can link to it. No permission is required to link to your content.

Hello, straw man. In case you're arguing about something you've never actually seen, Google News doesn't simply link, it provides summaries and thumbnailed photos.

Regardless, like a previous poster you're confounding technical convenience and moral sanction. The morality of a particular act is not determined by answering the question, "Was the environment originally designed for that?" There are lots of things the web has turned in to that it wasn't designed for; and there are lots of things it used to be that now it isn't. One thing it seems to be now is an environment where the content aggregator and his customer, the advertiser, wields power over the content producer, which is nowhere near the spirit of "collection of autonomous peers with no central control".