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.

[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.

[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.

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?

[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".

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.

"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: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: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: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.