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Why Bite the Google Hand That Feeds You?
Techdirt pointed out that not long ago, John Byrne, ex-editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com and now CEO of newly founded C-Change Media, decided to tackle the problem of why publications seem to be so vehemently opposed to Google being a part of their business process. While there aren't any earth-shattering revelations, it is a great, succinct description of the problem. "I received several solid answers from followers of this blog, including Frymaster who immediately took sides in the ongoing war between Traditional Media and Google. Wrote Frymaster: 'I reject out-of-hand the assertion that Google is profiting from others' content. Rather, I say that Google profits from connecting users to content. It is a service that most web publishers appreciate greatly. Google, unlike any other search engine ever, goes to great pains to deliver the least-skewed results possible. Google is constantly on the hunt for people who game their system. That's why they succeed. There is a direct connection between Google's user-centric, community-oriented approach and their financial success.'"
If you make a product people like and don't piss off people while making them want to use something else... they'll use your product?
STOP THE PRESSES!
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Nobody likes middlemen, especially middlemen who cut into their bottom line.
There, corrected that for ya.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
Google is like a market maker. Some people despise market makers, but they are ignorant of how trade works. Does the market maker profit from the trades of others? Yes, but without him there would be much less trade, and everyone would be worse off.
They send you traffic, for free, and set up advertising to make you money.
Papermongers hate google, because no one wants their wares anymore, much as I'm sure horse breeders hated Henry Ford.
Google does not deliver the package of ads with gratuitous attractive content supplied by traditional media. While this has as much to do with online delivery as google, google has first go at ads, in the search results, which tends to decouple any matching that may be done on the article level.
In effect, google completely breaks the traditional mass advertising model. Traditional media realizes this, which is why they are rebelling. The problem is that some traditional media thinks it can replace the ad model with a fully paid subscriber model. I don't think it can. There has to be a way for traditional media to co-exist with search engines,and this is the challenge. The companies that can innovate the ad model will be the companies that get out in tact. The others that just complain about all the money that is being stolen by google will likely be on those lame shows where losers complain about the government taking their jobs,and how socialism is ruining the country.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Why are the news publishers never up in arms about Yahoo News? Yahoo News is more popular than Google News by a significant amount.
I guess they realize there is more money in going after Google than there is in Yahoo.
Nobody likes middlemen, especially middlemen who cut into their bottom line.
I like middlemen like Google that connects sites to searchers. The searchers like it. Who is this Nobody that doesn't like it, besides Murdoch of the News Corporation?
Google provides a link to the sites in the search results. Yes, they have ads, but how does that cut into the bottom line of a news site that people can find have an article with info the're looking for? When the searcher hits the site, they can click on the ads the news site is running if they want to. Without search results, few but regular readers would know about the article to be there.
And that is what Murdoch is really complaining about, lack of regular readers. He wants subscriber only access to news sites. He wants that if we want to find something, we do it within his pay walls.
I had a subscription to Wall Street Journal, but I didn't renew (renewal just came up) and told them it was specifically because Murdoch was citing success of Wall Street Journal subscriptions to justify his fantasy, and I wanted no part of justifying it.
Of course, it helped that my debit card had been changed from the one they on file (without my permission, I do not recall authorizing them to perform automatic renewals), otherwise they would have renewed it whether I wanted to or not. The only reason they communicated with me was because the card on file had expired and they needed me to supply them the new one.
I'm a little more careful who I provide my new card info to now.
rd
Google is utterly evil as far as I am concerned. Why? Because they are in league with the worst people in existence: advertisers. Advertisers have ruined just about every great thing I have ever liked.
Remember when magazines had more content than ads? No longer. In fact, they purposefully don't put page numbers on the ad pages so you are forced to page through them to try to find the fucking articles.
Remember when TV shows only had 2 minutes of commercials? Now they have almost 10 minutes or so, and that doesn't include the logos and ticker/pop-up advertisements during the shows themselves...
Remember when cable had no commercials at all?
Remember when radio stations regularly had half hour to hour long blocks of uninterrupted music?
Remember when the internet wasn't a bunch of fucking pop-ups, banners, and flash crap? In fact, remember when the net was more like a library than a TV?
I even remember a time when my e-mail was just that and not a bunch of spam. Besides, my dick is rock hard and I don't want a Rolex so STFU already.
Even Google itself has been getting steadily worse as well over the years with searches returning less and less pertinent results.
I swear, the day a Minority Report type ad assaults me at the mall, I'm going to go postal. I can only take so much before I have to start making ear necklaces out of these bastards.
In every case the product has gotten worse, not better due to advertising influence. You would think with all that income it would be otherwise, but not so.
I've finally blocked google and all their accomplices from my home network to the degree that I am able and I don't care in the slightest if certain sites fail due to lack of advertising income. The internet is like an information based RAID array. Another site will just take their place and fill the void until it too fails and the cycle repeats.
"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. " ---Henry David Thoreau
The problem is this:
1. Print advertising makes ten times as much per buyer than online advertising.
2. No-one much is buying print advertising any more.
The papers are no good at selling print ads any more, so they blame the supplier of online ads. i.e., anyone other than themselves.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Google brings us information, more often than not produced by someone else. This is a concept upon which all of humanity exists upon. The only difference is now there's a new medium and they're doing it better than everyone else. Murdoch (and others) are from a generation were they had control. A generation where they did something, and made lots and lots of money. However, much like the entirety of human history, advances happen. Because of those advancements they can no longer control what they used to. Too often does our society stifle innovation because it threatens a certain sect of individuals control. Adapt or die, thanks.
Blow up my plane? Nuke ten of your airports.
"The proverb warns that you should never bite the hand that feeds you, but maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself."
You're asking people to accept that they exist at the whim of some other business and through rules that they can't influence or control. Would you put your own business at that level of dependence? Why should a publisher?
Google may be superficially good for a publisher today, but the reality is that they lose influence and control over their own product. They become commodity suppliers to Google, and that's no good to them. It may or may not be good for you-the-consumer, but that's not the viewpoint being argued.
Cheers,
Ian
> "A wise (powerful?) man keeps his friends close and his enemies
> closer." I tried Machiavelli, and Sun Tzu but can't quite find it.
Try Mario Puzo. I am fairly sure that was in The Godfather (the book, I mean -- it was certainly in the movie).
I say that Google profits from connecting users to content. It is a service that most web publishers appreciate greatly. Google, unlike any other search engine ever, goes to great pains to deliver the least-skewed results possible. Google is constantly on the hunt for people who game their system. That's why they succeed.
The quote's a good contrast with Altavista, which started out with "least-skewed" results, but declined when they were attacked by search engine gamers flooding the results with crap that they never really got very good at filtering out. All the while adding various portal features that cluttered up the site and tried to push users towards content they weren't looking for.
Or if they do have a news site that they like, they subscribe to its headlines via RSS and only actually visit it to read articles which seem worthwhile.
The only problem with this is when the newspapers compare it with their old business model, where everyone had to buy a whole newspaper in order to be able to skim it for the interesting stuff.
A bit similar to "the album is dead" phenomenon which has hit the music industry.
That is one of the dillemas of the Internet. So perhaps localized vendors need to come to grips with the problem of advertising on global media. This was not much of a problem when newspapers were essentially local, exceptions being the WSJ etc.
Boo-fucking-woo. When I watch The Daily Show on comedy central's website i get ads for a dutch isp. So apparently someone figured out how to work it.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Online is a superior replacement for newspapers. For starters, you can have exactly the same content as in the dead tree media. Secondly, you can update stories that are online. With newspapers, you can either release an evening edition, or have to wait until the next day to update stories for new developments. You also get a potentially wider readership with online because you can reach non local areas. Very few newspaper have a national or even international reach.
The idea of the market is that you should set the price at which the seller maximises their benefit. In the short term, high prices from Google should encourage competition to try and lower prices and perhaps capture some of those excess profits. If Google prices low enough to not entice competition, then in the long term, we could have a worse outcome overall, because there is no profit incentive for someone to come up with a new innovation. In the short term, high prices seem to not benefit consumers, but in the long term, they should, because they could bring competition.
Traditionally, the press have cultivated "loyalty" among their readership - not factual reporting. That means they want people who are comfortable with their output and will believe (or at least agree with) their content and read what is put in front of them without any critical thought. The way people find news with google is that they go and search for a topic or story or word - not for a publications's title (which they already have bookmarked). That puts pressure on the content providers to publish true, concise, and short pieces that googlers will compare with the other search results from other news sources,. before settling on reading the whole story (and advertisements) from one newspaper or news outlet.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons