Slashdot Mirror
Should Google Be Forced To Pay For News?
Barence writes "The Guardian Media group is asking the British government to investigate Google News and other aggregators, claiming they reap the benefit of content from news sites without contributing anything towards their costs. The Guardian claims the old argument that 'search engines and aggregators provide players like guardian.co.uk with traffic in return for the use of our content' doesn't hold water any more, and that it's 'heavily skewed' in Google's favour. It wants the government to explore new models that 'require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site (through advertising) and "at the edges" in the world of search and aggregation.'"
I work in the online division of a particularly large paper.
We work hand-in-hand with google and push to get as much content on there for free as possible.
Because we, unlike our moron competitors, understand that these clips bring traffic to our site, which makes us money.
robots.txt?
Or are they trying to get paid rather than make a point?
If the benefit is so "heavily skewed" then it should be a no-brainer to ask Google not to index your news site.
...as much money. Please, government, bail us out of this mess we're in! Our shareholders profits are at near-record lows!
The same issues are facing all news organizations, except for the few that actually embraced technology, or started pay for content long before news aggregates became en vogue.
Sent from your iPad.
Then google will play fair, im sure these news agencies will miss being able to use google's services for free when researching...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Google could just remove them from the search results and we'll see what happens then.. Somehow I think google will suffer less.
or the guardian could just use robots.txt
I just visited Google News two minutes ago, and clicking on the stories there takes you to the newspaper/media outlet's page, not some ad laden screenscraped Google version.
All these people who think that the Internet should change because it doesn't fit in with their flawed idea of how things should work need to grow up or GTFO.
claiming they reap the benefit of content from news sites without contributing anything towards their costs
Well, go ahead, be the first brave news source to ask Google to remove you from their caches. It'd be suicide. Even the article points out what you'd be doing:
The Guardian says content providers are faced with a catch-22: they can't afford to withhold content from search engines, yet can't feasibly charge consumers for it either, "not least because of the presence of the BBC and the vast quantities of free content it publishes on bbc.co.uk."
I'd like to hear and discuss the alternatives mentioned in the summary but can't find them in the article.
Has the Guardian's online readership or ad revenue plummeted?
Perhaps you should just learn to deal with Google acting as a portal and give your readers a reason to visit your site to read the whole article? This is overall a good thing for you--don't ruin it.
Where is Google making the money and how could you scale fractions of that to go out to sites based on popularity?
My work here is dung.
You'll notice when you load news.google.com - not a single ad. Click on ANY of the links... ads.
Now then, who is making money from this relationship?
Not only that, but there is a technical solution: check the referrer and if it is news.google.com throw the user to your home page so that you can pretend to "control" them. Or block them and let your competitors get the ad revenue.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
. . . crying out for a government investigation to figure out "new business" models for them.
For god sakes; provide a relevant service to consumers who are willing to pay for them, or *go out of business*!
The dot com bubble saw a million different companies that tried to sell things that nobody wanted, and each one of those companies cried a river of tears before it evaporated. Some of them even had a few promising ideas, just poor execution.
I'm afraid were about to see a bailout bubble, with huge valuations applied to ancient, dying companies that have no real value except for a "Too Big to Fail" stamp.
Value means you contribute, and generate wealth, preferably for everyone (customers, employees, management, and owners). When Value is defined as, "I hold your economy hostage, you better keep me alive," something is dramatically wrong.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
If they don't like their business relationship (insofar as one exists), I'm sure The Guardian is big enough that Google will deign to send their VP for something-something out there to negotiate some better terms. That's what VPs are for -- they manage these sorts of business relationships.
I'm sure they can work out some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement ...
There aren't even any advertisements on Google News. The Guardian seems to have at least two big ads on every article page (though, thankfully, not the home page).
So, the money quote from the Guardian's statement is this: "The argument has traditionally been that search engines and aggregators provide players like guardian.co.uk with traffic in return for the use of our content, and this is enough to make the relationship symbiotic and equal.... However, there is a vast over-supply in the market of advertising inventory, and yields have come under severe downward pressure. As a result, the value of the traffic generated by search engines and aggregators has reduced significantly."
In other words, if Google stopped sending traffic to the Guardian's web site, their ad revenue would go up!
Err... wait.
Did anybody think this through before going public?
Ah, yes! They want to explore "new models" that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site (through advertising) and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation." In other words, they want to tell another company, which offers a free service, how to run that free service, so it better supports their ad-driven service! OK, that makes much more sense.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
If the New York Times or your local paper are going out of busienss because you and I are finding our news on Google News then either we should pay or Google should pay.
I'd agree, except that Google does not actually produce news, or even reprint other people's articles. "Finding our news on Google News" means that we are being directed to the New York Times or your local paper. Those papers BENEFIT from Google's links.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Gotta let IE 5.5 go some time man.
I say good riddance.
They try to make it sound like Google is costing them something, saying Google ought to compensate them for the cost of producing their content. WTF? Does being indexed by Google cause them to have to produce more stuff? Online advertising may have fallen in value, but they're still getting more traffic, and therefore more revenue, with Google than they would without Google.
It's as you say: a business is bringing in less revenue than before, so they want someone else to make up the difference to keep them in the manner to which they are accustomed.
Because I can easily access all the news I need online, I don't buy newspapers, and I don't visit their advertisers when I go to their website.
All this just to say: whether I see their content via Google or at their own site, they're not getting a dime from me. (Or a shilling, or whatever the Brits call them.)
So stop linking to their content.
That makes complete sense. Why not cut yourself off from the biggest search engine. That way, when I'm searching the hundreds (thousands?) of news sites out there for some random term, your site won't show up. Because, of course, you know I visit each and every news site in the world daily, and Google is taking away from your revenue by pointing me to your site to read your articles.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
The funny thing is that I've had the Guardian on my RSS feed for a while, mainly because their RSS feed contains the whole article, so I don't even need to click the link unless I want to see pictures.
My feed reader might be "stealing" from them, but they seem to be encouraging it.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
If you don't want your content on Google... just add them to robots.txt... although that would remove you from the search engine entirely and I'm sure that's not what you want.
I read my news on Google because it's fricking easy to use. If you want more people to come to your site rather than reading your content on Google, maybe you should make it easier to do so.
Oh, really? Okay, when Google stops indexing the content of your rag, then you can look for its rotting body in the ditch next to the information highway.
You should be glad Google isn't charging you to carry your stories.
No longer holds water...okay, skippy, let's see you come up with a way to promote your site that doesn't include Google. Then I'll be impressed. Cause, see, in all the excitement, I can't remember whether we spidered your worthless rag or not. What you have to ask yourself...is do you feel lucky? Well, do ya...punk?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This piece of news seems to display enough idiocy to be immediately understood by all slashdotters as retarded. However, it's not idiot enough to grant just a couple posts about it being a dumb PR mistake that should never have seen the light.
Such precision is uncommon.
"So, you're saying that people can't tell anybody else what articles your paper has today?"
That sums it up succinctly. Google doesn't (aside from it's cache) serve up the article. All it does is state what articles are available and where they can be found. Exactly what someone saying "Hey, the Guardian had this article yesterday on page 17, you gotta read it." is doing.
Alternatively, Google should simply stop spidering the objecting sites. End of problem. Well, for Google anyway. The lack of traffic may cause a problem for those sites, but that's what they asked for.
The big problem with your argument is: once you throw a reasonable answer at the problem it's no longer news-worthy. It's so easy to keep a search engine off your site the article would quickly become a technical how-to... and uninteresting to the non-slashdot masses.
If you don't want to share then take your ball and go home. Google thugs aren't shaking-down editors, nor in the case of common feeds like the AP are taking anything beyond what they are allowed to. Close your doors, create a consortium-only system for sharing across "approved" sites, and you're good to go. The perceived money you're losing from not doing this already would easily cover the costs of developing and maintaining the system.
Just hope enough people are willing to come over and only play with your ball that it pays the bills. I would have never found places like the Guardian without Google, and if they remove their content would never go back.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
Why dont they just use robots.txt and exclude themselves from any search engines? If they dont want to be aggregated the solution is right there.
Micropayments/subscription wont ever work for online media, period. The printing business is not applicable on the internet but the old media moguls wont accept it. This is just another feeble attempt at getting cash from publication where the cost to publizise is close to zero.
HTTP/1.1 400
Well, since google news totally absolutely never links to the original site and just steals their precious text (which they put on the internet)I think the news sites should just not allow google to index, err, steal their content.
That'll show that thieving google who's the boss.
With adblock plus or noscript. Either will do the trick, running both I had to do some work to see the add you're talking about. That's firefox.
Opera will let you block the content too, if you prefer that.
You say that like writing code isn't work.
Should Google start paying for search results? This is idiotic. If they don't want Google to index them, thats what robots.txt is for. They can restrict Google from indexing them, they can lose traffic and everyone can move on.
Google refers people to the newspapers' web sites. They get traffic in exchange for the snippet of content. It's still a valid argument.
Who makes more money? The travel agent, or the vacation resorts? They travel agent NEEDS the resorts or they would have nothing to sell, but the resort is depended on the agent for their trade. If they are ignored by the travel agent, they don't do business as they are to small to attract their own customers.
Same with hotels and hotel booking agencies. Who controls who?
With google and the guardian it is pretty clear. Google is a multi-billion dollar company operating around the globe. The guardian a small british newspaper. This is in a way odd. It would be like the hotel booking agency being ten times the size of the hotels it refers to.
Because that is what google does. It indexes the newssites for us visitors and then allows us to choose the ones we want to visit. For that service it charges a fee in the form of advertising. The amazing thing is that Google has managed to make billions out of this. They are the portal that works! What is even weirder is that the end destinations of us visitors don't seem to be able to make enough money.
Imagine a travel agent that worked for free printing only a cheap add on your ticket, yet earned more money then the resorts themselves.
Historically, these type of refferal agencies have always had an uneasy relationship with their end-users. Travel companies have long since tried to get independent of travel agencies, selling their own products or forming alliances to operate their own.
Hotels love to have customers referred to them, but they hate that booking agencies can send potential customers to better/cheaper accomodations. Price compare sites are fought thought and nail by retailers. Hell, tv companies hate cable companies and expect them to pay for giving them the viewers that view their ads.
Google is making money thanks to others people content. This doesn't sit well, espeically when the people making the content have trouble making money themselves.
There is no easy solution. No content, no google. If news.google.com can't link to stories anymore, nobody would use it. Converserly, without news.google.com I wouldn;t vist half the news sites I do now.
Frankly both need to figure this out together as they need to realise they need each other. After all the guardian has an obvious solution, block google, but they don't want that. They just don't want the referrer to keep all they money for themselves. Google on the other hand has every right to say "though shit". They refer viewers to news sites. That the newssites can't make money of this ain't their problem. What next? A cabbie got to pay a portion of their fee to the hotel they drive people too? On the other hand, that cabbie as google NEEDS these end destinations.
But seeing the struggle in other industries makes it clear that this problem won't be solved.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There are other questions being raised here. This may be a direct attack on the you post I profit web 2.0 model. Perhaps this will force publishers to do ad-revenue sharing with content providers. I remember reading a while back about youtube paying content providers some amount of money from the ad-revenue their videos generate. How is this any different? This is a natural step in the evolution of the web 2.0 model (web 2.5?).
Huh? [devShell.org]
i can understand where Google Reader can effectively block a bit of ad revenue, but Google Reader is only as good as the RSS feeds that feed it. if BBC, Guardian, or anyone else are pissed off about it, well, disabling their RSS feeds seems like a place to start.
i would also expect them to pay Google lots of money for using Google's search engine. that is a "free" service that Google provides, and it seems a bit hypocritical to want to boost revenue in advertising, yet not want to pony up money for services rendered.
i like the Guardian UK website too, but now i will avoid them.
I work for the news wire AFP, and we have an agreement with Google to use our news.. and they DO pay us... http://searchengineland.com/afp-google-settle-over-google-news-copyright-case-10926
Lets see...in the past week The Huffington Post starts an online investigative team, Fox announces FoxNation, the Chicago Sun-Times joins the Chicago Tribune in chapter 11 and The Guardian whines about lack of online revenue to support its dying dead tree publication.
It seems to me some people in the media are figuring it out while others are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the inevitable. News happens to fast for traditional media to survive, the days of everyone being in the dark for 24 hours till the headlines hit are long over. Today "news" is as likely to get tweeted as its happening.
As for investigative reporting, most of the real investigation in my area seems to be from independent papers that are already quite heavy into the web, rss and other forms of new media, while the local newspaper has tried and failed with online subscriptions and has let go of most of its best writers in favor of canned news that is the same as what you can find online only a day late.
1) They like to troll (maybe just to get hits).
2) They also want to be a "Bridge Troll" collecting toll on a bridge they don't own.
3) Their bias is quite disgusting sometimes.
This is just outright stupid. Google brings customers to your site and you expect them to pay up?
A lot of companies pay up to 60% of sales to those who brought customers and made a sale.
Those news agencies are just idiots who have no idea how online business works. "Catch-22", my ass... Don't link how the Web business works? Get out and sale your newspapers through the boys on the street.
Information wants to be free, news wants to inform and the corporate fuckwads who control the information wants to be greedy.
Indeed. However these companies are making money from click-throughs due to being linked by google's service. Some of that money should go to the company that did all the work of gathering an audience providing them directions.
THe end-game here, if the companies win the suit, is that google will stop indexing their content for free, and instead charge them for the privilege. The companies will however get even equally good control over what gets indexed, so it won't be a total wash for them.
The only companies that have a shot at having the balance of payments skew in their favor are AP and Reuters.
news.google.com serves the news producers already through increased traffic. The news websites can put whatever ads they want onto their own webpages. Google doesn't give the whole news story, just headline and (for a select few) a single sentence, linked back to the news website.
Also, I'm looking right now and I can't find a single ad on news.google.com. So where's Google's monetary benefit here?
I can't believe you don't know what a Hasemalphaginnojinglanaporphomism is.
Since noone in this thread seems to have understood the issue, here's what I gathered after reading some German-language newspapers (I've not used google news in years, so please point out inaccuracies kindly):
So far, everytime you clicked on a story on google news, it took you to an article somewhere else. I.e., everytime there was an interesting story on google news, somebody else would share the profit.
But now google starts running news agency stories themselves. I.e., whenever someone clicks on an AP, say, story, they are redirected to a google news page that carries the AP story. Previously, it would have been some newspaper's page who happened to run that story.
So far so good. But how does google news decide which agency stories to place on their front page? For that, they use the story placement on the various news sites they're aggregating, and this is where it becomes unfair because this work is an essential part of running a news web site -- unordered newsfeeds aren't worth much, as otherwise everybody would be getting their news from ap.org or whatever.
In other words, by running stories from news agencies themselves, google has turned from someone benefitting the various news sites into a freeloader.
What if Google and other online advertising providers could allow for a linker and a linkee to exchange some fraction of their advertising revenue? This would acknowledge that some portion of the aggregator's revenue is the result of the linked content and that some portion of the content creator's revenue is the result of being linked by the aggregator.
If the system were set up right, an aggregator that produces a great deal of additional traffic for the content provider receives a net payment while an aggregator that doesn't produce many hits pays the content creator (not to exceed their revenue from the page or pages with the link).
You could have a bidding system where content creators establish required revenue sharing rates for a link and offered revenue sharing rates for a click-through. Content providers that offer good content for a competitive price would benefit and aggregators that generate a lot of traffic for the content providers would also benefit.
Of course this would probably kill Slashdot since no one reads the articles around here.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I think this just another pathetic whine from companies who just cant live the 21st century. They are crying to the Government to bail them out of their own incompetence and lack of vision.
Sites like Google News, Reddit and Digg dont take anything away from these news papers, they send them traffic and if they can make any money from that traffic, thats their own stupid fault !
Sooner or later, someone will find a way to pay journalists directly for their efforts without the need for a newspaper. When that happens, the newspapers will be totally redundant and totally dead !
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
I didn't say all of the add revenue, I said some of it. There is a Value add for Google's code.
However a lot of the time people will not click threw to the full story they will read the headlines and a paragraph and go on.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Guardian claims the old argument that 'search engines and aggregators provide players like guardian.co.uk with traffic in return for the use of our content' doesn't hold water any more, and that it's 'heavily skewed' in Google's favour.
Is The Guardian saying that their robots.txt file is not working? And that they are also not receiving the User-Agent string that allows them to identify GoogleBot?
Frankly, I am skeptical. I think they are not interested in the free-market, opt-in or opt-out as you wish, approach. What they are asking for is economic socialism(*).
* Please don't conflate political socialism with economic socialism. Don't tell me about gulags or suppression of dissent -- that's political socialism (or rather, some examples of it).
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
...its own position in the foodchain and start paying every time it reports on a current event. 300 killed in an earthquake in India? Then for every copy of a newspaper you sell that reports the story, send a % to the relief fund. Either that or accept the fact that you're in the business of making money out of the successes and failures of others, and be prepared to accept that you're as viable a target for that as anybody else.
your missing that goodle let's you opt out of the parasitic relationship you've imagined
Cable news channels (CNN/Fox/MSNBC/etc) don't contribute to the gathering and reporting of news, they only regurgitate (over and over and over and...) that of news gathering organizations (NYTimes/Washington Post/WSJ/AP/Reuters).
Funnily enough, I just noticed that the favicons for the Guardian and Google look quite similar. Perhaps it's a conspiracy and "Googlian" is fighting with itself to drive up pageviews!
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
Should Google start charging news sites for the privilege of listing news from their particular sites, since it clearly results in increased traffic to those sites which they monetize?
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
1.) Newspaper asks Google to pay for clips.
2.) Google drops newspaper from news index.
3.) Newspaper calculates the difference this makes in their revenue.
5.) Newspaper offers to pay Google rather a lot in order to be re-indexed.
Problem solved.
If their real complaint is with the BBC providing free online news, it's a bit disingenuous to direct their ire at Google. Of course, they're somewhat cornered because calling for BBC News to be shut down wouldn't be popular, especially for a left-of-centre paper.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think that's a better question.
It really makes you question what the real issue is here.
They're using their grammar skills there.
removing all Guardian Media groups references from google's search results, news, etc... Technically Google is under no obligation to list any of Guardian Media crap. Who will cry then?
Google should cut them off. Not only should they cut off the 'news' outlet they should cut off anyone else linking to the news outlet. There should be no way for them to get back in the system. If google does this twice. The others will STFU. Google should have done this when the p0rn spewers were whining.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it! Clearly, this must stop.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The more of these comments I read, the more it starts sounding like newspapers are starting to take pages from **AA's playbook(s). Well established fact: Printed newspapers are rapidly going the way of the dinosaur in this age of the internet. Revenue is dropping sharply across the board for all newspapers. Some see the handwriting on the wall and are changing their business strategy accordingly. Others? They're trying to shove this outdated model down everyone's throats in a desperate attempt to hang on. MEMO TO PRINT MEDIA: Your days are numbered, you know it, we ALL know it, STOP WITH THE DENIAL ALREADY, come up with a new plan or DIE, KTHXBYE.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
As others have said, most people don't go to news.google.com, they search google.com in which the news is linked at the top and then they show a google branded news feed. Both including ads.
Not to mention, wasn't it announced recently that google is adding monetization to google news?
http://www.physorg.com/news154892425.html
The Guardian Media Group has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.
"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it! Clearly, this must stop. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give newspapers and record companies free money!
"We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff! We need the Government to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it."
The newspaper group argues that traffic generated by search engines doesn't compensate for the cost involved in producing content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for it. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."
The Guardian suggest the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Also, they should give us money just because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Wouldn't that just fix the whole problem and saved you tons of time and money. Google should have an opt out or opt in feature for the news listing. You don't want to be listed well opt out and be done with it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
If Guardian Media doesn't want their news on Google News, they could ask Google to remove any Guardian Media content from it.
I'm sure Guardian Media will start to get less cites on the Internet, and that would hurt them. I use Google News for many press research, if a newspaper isn't on Google News, it's less likely that I find its articles fast.
Okay fine, I know who The Guardian is. But I didn't before I followed links to their site from Google News. I don't believe that any single news source can do a good enough job at covering the breadth of the news we process each day. Google gives us the digest of what's hot, based on yet another magical algorithm. This is all driven by the need newspapers have to find some revenue, ANY revenue right now. Papers are starting to close their doors forever because the Internet is how we get our news. The Guardian can do as they wish. No court is going to "force" Google to pay anything to them, Google won't do it voluntarily, and The Guardian can either let the matter drop or flail about madly until they go under. When that happens, please edit the title of this comment to "What WAS a Guardian?" Dumbasses.
Umm, why are they asking the government for help on this? If they want google to pay for news then they should charge google for the news. Why does the government have to get involved?
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Months ago, I gave up trolling thru all the Fox propaganda that now feature prominently on Google News. I don't know if Google is in on it or just too stupid to realize, but Fox 'News' has perfected the art of getting their incendiary, lie-filled headlines to pop up on Google News like dandelions in an subprime front yard.
In this particular case, the shareholder doesn't care about profits. It cares abut keeping the newspaper around.
Where will it stop? If you say sites can't aggregate news, next you'll be saying individuals can't relate to someone what they read; they'll have to buy their own copy. How long until the press equivalent of the PRS says you can't repeat news to another person as that counts as an unauthorized verbal re-performance of a copyrighted story?
I read the news today, oh boy!
You can find it at this URL.
I can't tell you what it's about.
You must go there yourself.
If I were to tell you they say they would put me in a cell!
I love to turn you on.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Absolutely right! To the Guardian editors: may I refer you to your local buggy whip manufacturer.
Really, if the Guardian has such an issue with being indexed in a search engine and news aggregator (what morons), then Google should kindly remove them from the same. They can watch their web hits go asymptotically to zero in the hopes that their printed word continues to bring in revenue (good luck...just take a look at fate of the rest of the old media). Or perhaps not so asymptotically ... if they're this dumb, their readership could conceivably go to absolute zero, popularist left leanings notwithstanding.
As they say in these here parts (hint: I'm at ground zero for the coming G20 chaos, and the Guardian is a local paper), "good riddance to bad rubbish." After all, there are plenty of left leaning blogs for those of us who lean that way, who do understand the new news paradigm, and don't react to a changing world by trying to legislate an untenable status quo.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
First it was PRS complaining, not that Google was serving up their music without paying, but that Google was refusing to serve their music because the price was too high. Now it's the Guardian insisting, not that Google shouldn't index their content, but that Google should have to pay the Guardian to index it... and apparently not get the option of refusing to index it instead.
Is it something in the water? Has the UK as a whole suddenly forgotten that walking away from a bad deal is a perfectly legitimate thing to do?
No. If the AP wants to charge Google, they are free to do so. The papers that carry AP stories have not been granted an exclusive license.
I'll reply to you, but others have misunderstood me the same way. The work a newspaper does is in large parts selecting which agency stories are interesting or relevant. Google lets others do this work for them without compensation. That's the problem. I would have thought that I had made that point quite explicitly in my first point but judging from the numerous replies, apparently I didn't.
It wants the government to explore new models that 'require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates
Though there are ways to quantify value, in the end it's mostly collective agreement on a subjective amount. What the Guardian (and many other media businesses) haven't come to terms with, is that their 'value' has shrunk massively almost to the point of non-existence with the explosion of the Internet. The only reason they're still afloat (in largely the same form as before) is because the masses haven't realized this yet either.
Value can be thought of in the obvious terms of supply and demand. Between 1821 (when the Guardian was founded) and 1995 (when the Internet really started to take off) there were limited options of where to find your news and read other people's opinions. That amount grew until there were quite a lot in 1995, but it was still possible to explore all of your options, and select the one you liked the most. Now with the Internet, it's impossible to take the time to get to know each and every source of news available to you. Others pop up all the time. The supply has flooded to the point where one human can't sift through it all.
So the supply has effectively become infinite, plummeting the demand to nearly zero, in the span of 14 years.
The other aspect of 'value', quality (which is what they want the government to investigate), is even more subjective. Now we can read blogs from people who live near every event. We get opinions from every culture and from the very people whose lives these events affect. We are bombarded with it, and may have to sift through things to get it, but the quality of content from a mass of thinkers and contributors could be considered to be disproportionately greater than a few people who travel and write well. In fact, a number of people who write well, post on the Internet, on nearly every topic, willingly and for free.
People fear the death of investigative journalism, but there has only been a rise of whistle-blowers and debunking by private, unpaid, reputable sources on the Internet. Yes, there is more garbage to sift through, but the amount and accuracy of the large mass of information available to the general public has increased significantly, once that garbage is sifted.
To sum it up, people are doing their job for free. It's human nature to want to share your findings and your feelings about what you think is important. And some of these people write just as well, and have as much background, as the staff on the Guardian. People still read the Guardian because they like the source, and are familiar with it. But if they were gone tomorrow, there is no shortage of sources for people to turn to.
They are asking for government money, that comes from citizens, to study a subjective value, in hopes to limit the freedoms of another company whom they are currently willingly and freely supplying. And all of this, because the citizens already aren't giving them what they consider to be enough money.
The real world 'investigation' of value is currently underway. What they don't realize yet, is that while their content may be the same, the situation has changed so much, that their value is much lower than they think.
The Guardian is probably the most net savvy of the big UK papers, so it seems strange that they would ask for something so ludicrous. I'd believe this a bit more if there was a story on it on their own website.
Pay for content, Burden on Google where Google isn't the good guy.
Opposing idea's of the popular opinion isn't a Troll. You can disagree with it. But a Troll. Come on.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Is clicking and throwing kind of like sucking and blowing at the same time? Hm maybe not, since clicking is present tense and you threw the link back in the past?
While I'm at it, there is one D in "ad" It's short for "advertisement" not "addverstisement".
no mod points for YOU
I think the news should pay for the news. If I do something newsworthy and they want to print it in their paper, they should pay me for giving them business.
I suggest Google simply removes the feeds of anyone who doesn't want to participate. Let's see how long they last without the traffic.
How about Google drops these whiny little bitches from their news service and let the news outlets explain to their advertising clients why they're suddenly getting a fraction of the page hits they were once getting.
I had only heard of Guardian as a random UK paper before Google news. It's only after going through Google news I realised that some of their articles are actually good. Now, when I have to search for UK news, I turn to them first. If they go off Google, I'll probably forget them and turn to something else. They're just committing suicide.
Contact every newspaper they summarize/index and say this: "Do you want us to index your site and make it available through http://news.google.com./ If you say 'yes', we'll index it. If you say 'no' we'll remove any link to your paper. Let us know by the end of the day."
You can't have it both ways. You can't hope for the exposure of Google, and then complain when Google won't give you money for providing the exposure.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
claiming they reap the benefit of content from news sites without contributing anything towards their costs
Well, they do (at least if the newspapers are stupid enough not to use Google ads). So what? Since when is it a principle of democracy or the free market that you need to pay for everything you "benefit from"?
As the US shows (Seattle PI, SF Chronicle, etc.), the days of the print paper and bloated newspaper organizations are numbered. This is just another attempt for irrelevant organizations like the Guardian to keep their outdated business models alive. Newspapers are hugely inefficient at what they do because they have become accustomed to living on a few percent off the top of a huge physical distribution chain. The modern equivalent of The Guardian is a a bunch of distributed, separate services: bloggers, commentators, classifieds, eBay, etc.
all built on the back of other people and companies
What isn't?
Mike
If I click the links you supplied, there are no ads on them. I presume this is because I live in the UK and therefore my IP address is sent different content.
If you go to the Guardian Media Group's response that was reported on in TFA then you will see that nearly all of their complaint is actually about the BBC and Channel 4. They don't mention Google at all by name.
In the UK, the Guardian must compete with publicly funded broadcasters, and in a converging media environment, they are all going to put their content on the internet. Furthermore the Guardian is investing heavily in online video and audio streaming. So there is increasing competition for the same market.
The Guardian's strategy of late has been to try and expand their global readership, but this requires their brand to be recognised (search engine hits) and for people to visit their site, instead of sucking the news off the search engine's summary page. This is incompatible with going down the paid-for content route which has been attempted by other newspapers.
google news decide[s] which agency stories to place on their front page [by using] the story placement on the ... news sites they're aggregating[. T]his work is an essential part of running a news web site [a piece of skilled input from highly-paid editors, which it's unfair to appropriate without payment]
And how is this different from all the mainstream news outlets in the US looking at the New York Times ("The Newspaper of Record") to decide which stories are important, rather than figuring it out for themselves?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
sue until you're making profit again!
Google News drives traffic to the sites of the content producers which increases the ad revenues of the content producers... am I missing something here??
An anonymous group of anonymous media sources is asking the British government to investigate the Guardian Media Group and other news reporters, claiming they reap the benefit of content from sources without contributing anything towards their costs. The media sources group claims the old argument that 'news sites and other reporting media provide players like government and industry insiders with a bullhorn in return for the use of their content' doesn't hold water any more, and that it's 'heavily skewed' in Guardian's favor. It wants the government to explore new models that 'require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both to... blah blah blah you get the point.
Lol, I agree only because I love to see Liberal AP versus Liberal Google fight it out over money.
Given it's the Guardian, it's entirely predictable they'd be asking for economic socialism.
the televison new or news shows that use the printed media as their building blocks An interview with Rachel Maddow for MSNBC states as much
"Special props to Rachel for recognizing how newscasters depend on print reporting for the building blocks of their shows; "without the [MoJo DC bureau chief] David Corns of the world, there's no show. David Corn can do his job without me, but I can't do my job without him."
Rest of the article can be read here http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/03/exclusive-rachel-maddows-anxiety-dream-and-more-mother-jones-gala-video-clips
so why the sledge hammer to a collector/pointer of news why not go after the real users of it. ??
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
Maybe the specs for robots.txt should be changed to require a robots ALLOW configuration, and the requirement for that be phased in? That would get rid of these pinhead complainers. (And this is a problem that seems to keep recurring whenever some new PHB thinks he sees a new way to make money.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This kind of thing makes me so blind with anger that it makes it hard for to write about it. They link news stories to news sites and enable the masses to be able to read news more easliy and they try to force a fee on them. So help me god if my GoogleNews widget in my Dashboard gets taken away. I am a busy college student, employed by a programming company, I need my news fast, and I dont want to have to search all over the interwebs to look for it. I want to stay informed. They make their money google makes thiers. Live and let live. Damn I hate this type of policy!!!
Your wagging finger of "free Internet" evangelism is misplaced. OP never said there was a pay wall, he said "we, unlike our moron competitors, understand that these clips bring traffic to our site, which makes us money."
How do newspaper websites make money? By getting visitors to click on their ads. How do you get lots of visitors? Give it away for free, and co-operate with Google to get your content listed near the top so you get lots of hits. Protectionist subscriber "exclusive content" models are pretty much instant fail and the newspapers/media businesses that are going to survive this recession know that.
Every page that Google indexes is increasing driving clicks to that page and increasing the ad revenues to the owner of the page. Unless Google is enabling people to view the page without the original ads, then the original content providers should just STFU and stop complaining just because Google makes money in the process of driving traffic to their site. The problem here is with pages that don't derive revenue from ads, such as the BBC website, which is funded by British taxpayers. In that case, they have every right to block access from anyone who isn't a British taxpayer. If the people accessing the page are taxpayers or anybody else that has already paid for the content, then again, why should anybody care if Google makes money by providing the link? This looks more like a case of "You're making money doing something we didn't think of with our content, so we want some of it!" than anything else. As far as I know, Google honors robots.txt -- if you don't want them indexing your content, they will not.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Google should simply not link to Guardian content in any way, shape, or form. Any attempt to access Guardian content on purpose via Google (e.g. site:guardian.co.uk any-search-term) should be diverted to a copy of the Guardian's legal complaint.
While this would effectively make the Guardian publications disappear from the Internet, that seems to be what the Guardian is asking for. So let them have it.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Not really. It depends on how you define "church." You would be right if you were to define it solely to mean the institution headquartered at the Vatican. But that definition is rather truncated.
Another very common definition is that a church is a group of Christians united by some bond, perhaps like geography or language, or just vaguely being Christian. So it would be more accurate to say that the printing press delighted many in the church. The Protestants (a huge church) really went to town with it. It's a distortion to think the Church has a single will or voice and was uniformly pissed off about technology.
Incidentally, the same fuzziness describes how the church relates to science.
Including slashdot.... :)
What is really meant here is news. More specifically news gathering which is done by humans known as reporters, and editing, which is done by humans called editors. They are not "creating content"; they are writing the news.
Now: Google doesn't do any of that. We can have a discussion on whether Google is distributing the results without helping pay for the feet on the street and the fingers on the keys. Seems like a good discussion to have, since there are now fewer feet on the street and fingers on the keys, and hard news reporting is on the decline. Consider a world with all the "content" anyone wants but little real news.
Basically the Guardian is asking to be "given" an additional revenue stream based on when Google refers viewers to it.... In other words, they would make more money from new Google-referred viewers than from loyal readers who go directly to Guardian.co.uk because they like the Guardian. OK. I guess I won't be personally recommending to any of my friends to read the Guardian, or else I might be on the hook big time... What is the logical extension of this anyways? Would a map-making company need to pay money to each and every business or notable destination they include on their map (since if there was nothing interesting on the map, who would buy it?) Acknowledging (and REPORTING ON) the existence of facts (whether drama amongst the Royals, or that Newspaper X has published the most popular story on Subject Y) has generally held to be a free right of all - it seems highly ironic that a NEWSPAPER like the Guardian seems intent on limiting such an inherent right which it's own work is centered on. All in all, this is just "envy". Guardian, like alot of other media companies is not finding it easy to be profitable, yet they see all these other "enabling" technology companies "just a step away" from their field of business, who are making tons of money. This was really the impetus for stuff like the AOL-Time-Warner merger in the 90s... Except that didn't turn out so well. So now the media companies just want extortion payments to get upside with no downside.
... these same news companies would be threatening to sue these same search engines and aggregators if they suddenly stopped including these companies news content in their search results entirely, as well.
So, how do you get out of one of these "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations without handing someone a big check?
8==8 Bones 8==8
I use Google News through an RSS feed. The headlines I click on take me directly to the articles source website for viewing. That's gotta be good for any paper running off of ad revenue and they can all thank Google for it because honestly I'd never go to any one of their sites on an individual basis. Occasionally I use the RSS feed's main Google News link to go directly to Google News, so I can get a better overview of the days news, and from there I go directly to other sites if a story interests me. What are they complaining about? With the option to opt-out from Google I don't see any issue. If anything, I should find a way to be able to block or add certain providers news to Google's RSS as I choose.
It's not like the Guardian is some flailing dead tree publication that can't cope with the way the world is turning.
The Guardian has a world leading online presence. It was the second British paper, after the Telegraph to go online and it's online content has always been free. It leads the field in innovation in news web-publishing.
So many people seem to be assuming that the guardian media group are motivated by corporate profits - i wonder how different the replies would be if the original message had contained the info that GMG is wholly owned by the Scott Trust which is not for profit?
That's why they get all hysterical in their deathtroes and try to invent fake ways to get some income before its over.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Google doesn't retool the news, it only serves as a portal to the various news agencies out there, categorizing them in groups and serving them as lists. So, no, they shouldn't pay for the news, since in essence, we must visit the originating site which created the news.
Yes, they are benefiting all the way to the grave.
them agrigator sites make all the money from other peoples work, those days are gone !
The Guardian could make their pages subscription-only if they wanted, and assuming anyone was willing to pay for a site run by people who sacked Mark Steel for being too common, and banned me from their comment boards.
Nobody seems to be asking the key question:
If news organizations want Google to pay them for linkage, why shouldn't the news organizations pay for the raw material in the first place?
Admittedly they sometimes do pay for interviews, but the vast majority of news material is, in the language of IP-speak, "stolen" material. When a television news crew shoots footage of a house fire they don't pay the homeowner, even though the homeowner is originating the event and the TV station is making a profit from it. Unless news organizations want to start paying for raw material, I think they should STFU and GBTW.
without links to your news site on google, i won't be visiting your site because there's not a link to your site on google. and since i won't be visiting your news site because there aren't any links to your news site, you can't generate money from your advertisers. this isn't rocket science.