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Newspapers Face the Prisoner's Dilemma With Google
Hugh Pickens writes "Nicholas Carr has an interesting analysis of Rupert Murdoch's threat to de-list News Corp's stories from Google and Microsoft's eager offer to make Bing Murdoch's exclusive search engine for its content. Carr writes that newspapers are caught in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma with Google because Google's search engine 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.' If any single newspaper opts out of Google, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. There is only one way that newspapers can break out of the prison — if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Murdoch may have been signaling to other newspapers that 'we'll opt out if you'll opt out,' positioning himself as the would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak, without actually risking a jailbreak himself. There are signs that Murdoch's signal is working, with reports that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are now also considering blocking Google. In the meantime, Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft."
What is a newspaper?
When it comes to Google and other aggregators, newspapers face a sort of prisoners' dilemma. If one of them escapes, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. But if all of them stay, none of them will ever get enough traffic to make sufficient money. So they all stay in the prison, occasionally yelling insults at their jailer through the bars on the door.
So ... the original prisoner's dilemma (if I recally my AI coursework) was basically comes down to two or more prisoner's arrested as suspects in a crime. They are immediately separated into different interrogation rooms. The police officers use every trick they can to get any of the prisoners to lay claim to committing the crime and receive a plea bargain if they testify against the other suspects. If no one caves, then everyone walks. Now, the important thing to note here is that if one suspect caves and the other n-1 suspects don't, then that suspect receives a sub-optimal reward of a lighter sentence while those that did not own up to the crime receive very harsh penalties. And so you have a dilemma ... did one of your crew rat you out already? Should you take the guaranteed three months in prison versus a potential ten years?
... but the most important problem is that no one knows if the current situation is a suboptimal goal or optimal goal. And no one's going to find out until they leave Google. If a single newspaper leaves Google, they ruin it for themselves (unlike the prisoner's dilemma) and no one else. In fact, the others might even benefit from that.
The important thing is that one rogue actor could ruin it for everyone.
So the analogy seems to imply that newspapers have taken a suboptimal goal (being in jail)
What this is a closer analogy to is the MLB strike you may (or may not care about) remember. Basically the baseball players didn't think they were making enough bank so they went on strike. If anyone of them said, "Screw it, I'm leaving the league, I'm going to literally take my bat and ball and go elsewhere," then they would have been broke. But the whole league went on strike, they could have formed a new league, they could have went to a different league, they could have entered talks with the European league to open leagues in the US, etc.
The newspapers should continue to court Microsoft and play the two search leaders off against each other. Also, I'm no robots.txt expert but I think there is a disallow from certain domains syntax they can use to block Google, Microsoft or white list one of the two. Another strategy might be to go on strike and have all newspapers request to be removed from Google for one week. Let the system break down and then enter negotiations with the giant.
One thing is pretty clear, they must unionize/unify and act as a single entity in either leaving or negotiating. And I don't really see that happening. They might be able to negotiate between Microsoft and Google on a case by case basis but Google is still too much larger than Bing to do that.
My work here is dung.
There is no dilemma, there is only change. The Internet is a tsunami that is roaring over all aspects of our society. In the content industries it is clearing land for some while washing away the livelihoods of others. It is a force of its own. You can manage somewhat as you go but one thing is certain: it is now impossible to stop it, we have passed the tipping point. You might as well curse the wind, or you could adjust your sails to the best of your abilities.
Shh.
Really? Losing links to the various News Corp sites will "inflict damage" on Google's business?
Really?
...my mainstream media free google news search hits. Let me support some motivated, independent amateur investigative reporters... I have had waay enough of the corporate parrot news line for the self-proclaimed "professionals".
Maybe, just maybe, consumers who value actual news over sensationalized claptrap are finding that the opinion pieces and "human interest" stories which dominate Murdoch's offerings are fungible commodities.
Good bye Wall Street Journal. You were a reputable publication at one time.
Yeah instead you'll get bloggers interpretation of news stories on the front page. Haha.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
When the newspaper corporations continue to spout how the visitors brought in by the search engines are worthless because those people are drive-by visitors, I have to wonder about their content. If someone is brought in by a search engine they should be considered an opportunity. If you are not taking the time to ensure your design and content are meant to draw those opportunities into a goal, well, I think you're looking at this from the wrong way.
This is yet another reason why the newspaper industry just doesn't get it. Google gets it and so do the consumers. Microsoft doesn't get anything more than the bone they are being thrown.
I wish people would stop reporting on this story as, honestly, it's just a lame attempt at getting attention.
I don't think Google will care in the slightest if all the newspapers removed themselves from its index. There are still plenty of online only news sites, specialist media sites and so on that Google can point to. If people know they want to read one of Rupert Murdoch's offerings, they would go there direct, not via Google, and most Google customers aren't going to go to Yahoo or Bing to compare the search results they get.
So even if Google doesn't index, say, the Wall Street Journal, can't Google still get the same news contributions form the AP newswire?
Or is there something special about AP license terms or something?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Will the BBC join? No! So international news is hopeless. Do people care about local news?
What if google endowed a nonprofit news organization? Or just bought wikinews the rights to use AP feeds?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
This is the key issue, "few people want to use them for news". The way for newspapers to survive is to stop trying to provide up-to-the-minute news and concentrate on in-depth, reliable reporting. Newspapers are idea for covering local issues that do not get the attention of big media. They are also ideal for sports news and providing a forum for informed debate. The big strength of a newspaper is that there is a gate-keeper to prevent rubbish from being published. If newspapers can take advantage of that they can not only survive, but prosper. If newspapers simply try to out-internet the internet they are doomed.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Neither one of these has anything to do with Google, however surviving Google (or it's replacement) requires doing one and or the other. The fact that Google is the delivery mechanism for much of their traffic is moot. Changing the delivery mechanism won't change the fundamentals behind the issue. What newspapers need to do is learn how to keep the traffic they get once visitors find their site.
Even if what seems like a critical mass ouf publishers start delisting from Google, Google's search engine and advertising power and weight is such that other publishers and smaller news sites would simply move in and fill the void. Google might also be more than happy to get less hassle. It certainly won't work if publishers who want to delist start wanting to charge for news, and Microsoft will simply be pouring money down a drain if they pick up that slack and pay the publishers themselves.
It's a horse that won't run and the only reason why Murdoch is banging on about it is because News Corp is making some sizeable losses with no end in sight.
Carr has railed about this problem before, and he's still just as wrong as he ever was.
Here's his analysis of Murdoch's first pronouncements on the topic back in April. And here's why he's just as wrong now as he was then.
(I later turned that post into a newspaper column in the country where I live. It's longer and slightly more polished, but more focused on our particular issues, which aren't necessarily germane to the larger debate.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Also, I'm no robots.txt expert but I think there is a disallow from certain domains syntax they can use to block Google, Microsoft or white list one of the two.
To block Google from all site pages:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
To block Google indexing a certain page (exchange brackets for > / <):
[meta name="googlebot" content="noindex"]
To be less specific in the user-agent line of robots.txt:
User-agent: *
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Google already licenses the AP feeds. Click any AP story and you go to the Google-hosted AP text.
This is why this scheme is NEVER going to work. Google already licenses AP, which creates 75% of the content in all these papers anyway. Also there are many major international players, like the NPR and BBC and CBC, that will never opt out of Google, as they are not-for-profits in the first place.
The end result is everyone will get their local news from NPR/CBC/BBC, and all these newspapers will just go under FASTER.
No one will pay for news online. Give it up.
You forgot about the most important aspect of the prisoner's dilemma: Whatever the others do, you are better off to confess. Typically, the dilemma is presented with two prisoners: - If both keep silent -> both get one year jail based on weak evidence - If both confess -> both get three years jail - If one confesses, and the other keeps silent -> the one that confesses walks out free, the other one gets ten years jail Now what do you do if you are the prisoner. There are two possibilities what the other one has done: - If the other one has kept silent, you will get one year jail if you also keep silent, and walk out free if you confess -> Better to confess in this case - If the other one has confessed, you will get ten years jail if you keep silent, and three years if you confess -> Better to confess in this case So irrespective of what the other one is doing, you are better off confessing. So the only rational choice is to confess. Since both prisoners face the same incentives, both will confess and both get three years jail. There is no way for them to reach the clearly superior outcome of only one year of jail for both of them.
I think the assumption is that allowing Google to index your news site is like ratting. With two sources of news:
If neither rats (lets Google index their news) then both sites get the brand awareness and ad revenue.
If one site rats, then Google gets some of their ad revenue, but they get all the Google directed traffic, which is a win for the ratter.
If both rat (the current status quo), then Google get some of the ad revenue from both sources of content.
What is best for a single site, in order, is:
1. Google indexes their content and no-one else's.
2. Google indexes no-ones content.
3. Google indexes everyone's content.
The dilemma the news sites face is how to get from 3 to 2, without having competitors in position 1.
Of course, this isn't exactly a prisoner's dilemma. The news sites can communicate and make deals. The prisoners caught in the dilemma can't.