Slashdot Mirror
Google Threatens French Media Ban
another random user writes in with a BBC story about Google's displeasure with proposed French plans to make search engines pay for content. "Google has threatened to exclude French media sites from search results if France goes ahead with plans to make search engines pay for content. In a letter sent to several ministerial offices, Google said such a law 'would threaten its very existence.' French newspaper publishers have been pushing for the law, saying it is unfair that Google receives advertising revenue from searches for news. French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti also favors the idea. She told a parliamentary commission it was 'a tool that it seems important to me to develop.'"
France is out of french money, so where to get more?
Just put a complete paywall up over your news. Then you don't have to worry about anyone ever reading it again.
Instituting a law that makes search-engines PAY content providers for click-through links from searches will obviously result in ALL links to media being dropped from search results.
The phrase you're looking for is NATURAL CONSEQUENCES.
Personally I think The Big G should have immediately dropped all search results leading to French Media Sites with a HUGE banner saying "this is what THAT LAW requires us to do".
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
If I were Google I'd wait for the law to become effective and then switch off France altogether. Not allowing other search engines to take over beforehand but still serving the French right.
The finest form of Internet cleansing. Everyone's a winner.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Google isn't reading the newssites. The general public is reading the newssites.
Google is helping them by sending more readers. They really think that they get that service for free?
Are they really that dense?
I expect Google to flip that switch off when the law is passed.
We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their correct technical name... paenguins.
they'll soon come crawling back...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Please stop saying "the French" and say "the French government" instead.
Being governed by incompetent morons doesn't make us so.
Google's Biz Model is to slap advertisements on content that other people create. Google makes a stink ton of money doing this. Just because Google has *indexed* the content doesn't some how give them the right to profit from that content (as they do) and not give the creators a cut. Google does not want to cut the creators a share of the money that Google earns by appropriating that original content. As usual they'll scream about it "breaking the internet" - but paying creators part of the profit that Google makes from indexing the content that other people generated really does is break Google's biz model.
Sayonara, froggy asses!
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
"How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?"
-- Charles De Gaulle
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
It's going to take France a decade or more to undo the damage that Mitterra... er... Hollande is doing. They did the same thing to themselves in '81. Once a generation they elect another hard core lefty and have to relearn the lesson. That's how it goes when you train your citizens from birth to be entitled malcontents.
remove French news paper content. Seriously just set up a donate link.... WE NEED TO SEE THIS. I got plenty of beer, dope and popcorn ready....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Waouh that was bad... Can I get 10 minutes of my life back please?
The question whether Google is capitalizing on the content created by others or whether the content creators are benefitted by Google can be easily answered by answering two simple questions:
1. If there was no Google, would people still use (read) sites that provide different contents to them, and would the latter be able to make money?
2. If there was no content, would people still use Google (search for anything on the web), and would Google be able to make any money at all?
Now you know who's getting a free ride on whose back, and who should be obliged to pay a majority cut from its revenue gained through the symbiotic relationship of search+content to the other party.
The creators of that content don't deserve a cut of the money. Copyright doesn't work that way.
Excuse me, but that's so freaking stupid, that blows all scales of measurement. What do these guys think, how will anyone find their content, if it won't be accessible by search engines? Do they want to go back to pre-search engine times with sites aggregating content sites into categories like a phone book? Go, bury yourselves under a rock and stay there.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
If France doesn't want to work and play well with others, then put them in the corner and ignore them.
TL:DR;
If you don't care about your subject enough to write a 50 word summary then why should I?
How the hell do you turn this story into an anti-immigrant rant? Time to up your meds I think...
No, this isn't Google "Threatening" anyone - but if the news agencies want to charge Google for indexing their pages, I am sure Google will simply not index their pages. There are multiple reasons for this:
1. There is much more value provided to the news companies than to Google for indexing any one site. If anything, *Google* could *charge* the news agencies to be listed.
2. Google doesn't make any money if a "customer" searches for something, finds the news site, and then just goes there (as will happen in 99.99% of all cases). Google only makes money on the 0.01% of the time when the users click something *else* (i.e. one of the paid listings). So the value of the things the user is searching for is actually very low on a per-site basis. Whatever Google would be able to pay news sites and still make a profit would be very low, as to probably not be worth it.
3. Most important: It would set a very dangerous precedent for Google to actually pay sites for the privilege of listing them. Every site in the world would start demanding money from Google.
4. Most Obvious:The sites are opening their content to the world and then complaining that someone read them. Google automatically scanning them is logically no different than me reading the newspaper and telling my friends about the articles - it's just being done on a larger scale, and automatically.
The problem with this is that it creates a new barrier to entry that wasn't there before. If prior to this I wanted to set up a French language news aggregator site, it wouldn't cost me much more than the hosting, the spidering and the other regular overheads of running a website all of which I could recoup by selling ads. However with this law in place I'd have to spend a lot of time and money making sure the news sites got paid. It means you can't set up a French news aggregator without some serious startup capital.
Just let google drop reference anything that refer to french sites.
1. Search Airbus point it to Boeing.
2. Search any French News point it to other off French site.
3. Search French Goverment site point it to other foreign sites.
Why bother? They want it, let's give it to them.
The French media (along with Murdock in the US) have to realise that this is just a configuration problem on their end. The HTTP protocol has clearly defined how things work. Search engines can do an HTTP request to request content, but first have to read the site's robots.txt and adhere to the rules contained within it. If someone doesn't want Google indexing their content, just setup a rule in the robots.txt and I am sure that Google will properly remove it from their indexes. No lawsuits, laws, or even threatening letters needed.
Perhaps Google should send them all a how-to on configuring robots.txt?
What is the name of that strange beast that runs in ever decreasing circles until it runs up it's own backside, from which safe retreat it hurls abuse and calumny upon it's enemies...Is it a French beast?
What they probably want is that google news and similar google do not post exerpt of their articles. They still want to be found by googling. Your solution is not about this.
A much easier solution is to put a robot.txt and stops google scanning the whole web site.
Their obnoxious approach to linguistic matters is soo last century, so who cares if they are dropped off from the cliff?
Remove all ".fr" and anything in French from all internet. Problem solved.
They can have their own Taliban-grade Internet.
Is this a joke? People go to great lengths to be in Google's search results, and these idiots want the opposite? I suggest Google remove them altogether from the search engine. Why stop there? Remove their servers from the DNS, disconnect them from the ISP, and unplug the servers. Because if they don't want their information shared, they shouldn't put it in a public place where information is shared. Stupid ignorant trolls.
For local news here in Belgium, google news lists headlines with summaries of different articles very often for instance. Often the articles it lists are all about the same event/news from different sources. I personally gave up on google news, since it is always lagging behind, and just doesn't have any added value over just going to the website of the local paper or news service. Same goes for international news for me.
They should drop those that have paywalls. They are the ones pushing that law. The ones without paywalls are obviously making it work. But once the paywall holders realize that Google is their friend, then they will stop French politicians.
BTW, it should not be just google. It should be google and bing (which includes yahoo). Even a day of that, possibly a week, would let the french media know that these search engines HELP them, not hurt them.
Besides their real problem is that they had a monopoly. Now, they have competition. If they want to make loads of money, they will simply have to be the best there is. That does not mean just delivering news, but at designing websties that are useful that local citizens can not do without.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'll take the opposing side as a thought experiment, because there is actually a point in there, This is not my real opinion on this topic. My real opinion is if the French do this, then Google will have to filter French sites just as a business decision.
OK so people who write for a living need to be compensated. If Google makes everything free, then what are they going to do? France is a place that takes great steps to guard its culture against the deprivations of "the market". They directly finance, to a certain extent, their musicians for instance. In France, you might be a street musician paid by the state. It's just like the discussion the other day about astronomy in the US and who pays for it; some things just would not exist if they relied on the market to produce them. Those things are public goods and they need to be supported collectively.
So this nation that pays musicians to muse has their writers decrying the give-away of their labor by Google. There IS a sense in which that's stealing. It's theirs, Google took it and gave it away without their permission. I am not saying it's the only way to interpret that state of affairs, but it's not prima fascia a crazy interpretation.
The French thinking here is not without real interest. They are essentially trying to impose a form of micropayments on Google. If a vision of the web and Google had been co-designed by all concerned parties from the start, this likely would have been the deal. But Google and like search engines just "happened" to everyone and has come to be seen by most people as a kind of force of nature, a natural fact about the web that it's useless to work against.
The French don't buy into the whole idea that the average person should think of herself as a helpless, passive recipient of some big, non-human market "forces" .. They keep in the forefront of their minds the fact that people are behind companies and laws govern people. We could go for a little more of that thinking over here.
This idea, if Google were forced to live by it, would really tank Google as we know it. Their business model would not survive in its present form. But Craigslist tanked newspapers in their present form- they were 80-90% reliant on their classifieds for revenue.So business models fail when things change ; that would extend even unto Google itself. That's a completely valid way to look at things.
The difference is that some people accept it when business models are the ones inflicting the change, no matter how radical- i.e. Google and Craigslist, but not when laws and legislatures try the same thing- that's Communism ! But attempting to enforce copyright law is not a form of Communism. It's just the opposite, it's capitalism, errr.. right?
Google's moral - economic argument goes something like this- our search engine provides you, the author, with a form of free, worldwide PR for your brand and the ability to generate revenue by running ads on your site. We are therefore a net benefit to you the copyright holder. Of course the benefit to society is not in question and the more information there is out there, the more productive and innovative people will be and a rising society lifts all boats, it's just that some people in society like to sink other people's boats.
But the same moral-economic argument can be made right back to Google. By paying us, the copyright holders, you're distributing Google money to the value -producing agents that provide first rate content for the web in the first place. By making the web worthwhile, we provide you with a huge world wide advertising venue and the opportunity to charge advertisers a fee. The money you give to us we spend and that stimulates economic activity the world over as goods and services chase all these dollars that are now being distributed more evenly.
The idea of compensating authors and copyright holders in micro amounts for micro contributions is interesting. But that's not the way we'r
Google is making money off information they don't have to pay for!?!? I'm outraged. The news outlets have to pay for all the information they get, don't they? Wait. They don't have to pay someone every time they take their picture? Or, any time they use some piece of information that is publicly available?
Qu'est-il arrive' a' tous nos utilisateurs?
-CF
I would love to see newspapers get what they ask for, and watch their Web traffic sink to nearly zero.
they after some warmup verbiage said THOSE EXACT WORDS
which of course takes 1 Being able to prove you are RIGHT 2 Testicles that resemble above average sized Coconuts 3 Not wanting to be diplomatic AT ALL
personally i think any attempt to access French Media via a google search should result in an error message that implies (in a court friendly manner) that the information is 1 Known to be Wrong 2 Pirated 3 otherwise contaminated
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
No matter what the media or the government decide, there is no scenario where the media comes out ahead in this deal.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I would start charging French media sites for all click throughs to their website.
If they did not pay, they would not get indexed in the future.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I suspect, should Google follow through, the French would turn from traditional media to Twitter and aggregators in such numbers and with such persistence as to gravely damage traditional media's prospects.
Could this be how to remove Google from our lives? If more countries jump on this bandwagon and pass laws like that, WE CAN FINALLY GET RID OF GOOGLE!!!!
The French newspapers seem to be forgetting that Google provides them with a valuable service. If it weren't for Google, no one would know that the newspaper had the content in question. Sure, the user can directly type in the URI of the newspaper to get there and see if they have the content, but they can do this regardless of Google indexing them or not.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
How about French Media pay Google to be included in any search results? This could also work for the MAFFIA. Unless they pay Google to be included in search results, no movie or song promotion would be listed.
Just because I can phone anyone legally does not mean that I can legally write a program that will phone everyone.
And just because I can summarize an article, providing the necessary citations, does not mean that I can legally write a program to summarize all of wikipedia and then post that online with advertizing.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Because you're not a Luddite trying to prop up a failed buisiness model.
As you know, government's role is to nanny-state the corporations... you know, the 47%.
Google privacy policies are not welcome in Europe as well as most other civilized countries. Europe will make sure Google can only index junk and remove its user base from this business. Google also has major competitors outside of the English speaking world. They lost to their competition in pretty much all other languages to companies that respect privacy.
Advertising money often comes from click-through, not page impressions.
No need to read the rest of your post -- you clearly do not know what you're talking about.
CPM drives ad rates BECAUSE it is predictable. CPC is always abysmally low and is not predictable. Where I worked (major metropolitan newspaper) CPC was around .03-.05% depending upon the ad.
The rate cards are always set based upon traffic, which is why editors and channel producers lived and died by their traffic numbers.
Shouldn't the title be "French government unveils (asinine, imho) plans to make search engines pay for content" !?
/. and Le Canard Enchaîné ! (and cut big G some journalistic slack)
Just so you know, according to an insightful french documentary about the french medias, most of the french newspapers are owned by Lagardère and Dassault (evil sycophants, fear them !).
Everybody I know could not care less about these "feuilles de chou", but as ink sink, lobbies will lobby...
Read
This has nothing to do with USA, but with EU. Google has a physical presence (offices with employees) in Ireland, UK and Switzerland, which are all on the list of tax friendly countries. France is pretending that what counts is where the content is delivered (eg: the viewer of the add is in France), but the problem is that the general laws in Europe about delivery of a service tend to make you believe that it depends more on where the servers are located, or eventually where the employees are. So if Google wants they can bring this mater to the European courts, and rightly, IMO.
I'd rather expect a classy: "Oh, merde...!" (spoken with a Patrick Steward accent).
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I hope they do it.
This communist country deserves this.
Because you're asking them to make it better than Google. There isn't one website in the world that is better than Google, and you're asking every site to be better than Google. And Google is that good because it offers practically zero original content, so how the heck does a content provider compete with Google?
If providing no content is better than providing some content, clearly you'll need to solve the negative content problem to be better than Google. Demonstration of this is left as a exercise for the reader.
France could nationaize web search. They could create their own web crawler. Then they could pass a law making it illegal for any other web crawler to index content located on servers in France. They could then license the index out to search engines. Note this is a terrible idea. Socialism is bad bad thing.
The point is that they want BOTH, enjoying Google services for free and getting paid for them.
Now they wait till Google unlists them, so they can sue that Google is unfair and discriminating. Google can only lose this battle, no matter what.
So Google males money by selling advertising on a site that provides links to other sites that can then gain revenue by selling advertising on their site. Now they want to charge Google for listing their site? What's next? Charging to link sites? Not a far step considering that a search result is just a list of links.
Let Google simply stop showing any search results for these sites. I'd like to see how long they last before they stop acting like fools.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Bordel de merde! Ze 'ricains dare threaten ze great Republique! We will send the invincible Grande Division de La Gloire Napoleonique "Café du pissoir" and the Sixth Brigade of the Glorieuse Armée de la Grandeur "Adieu le Fromage" to march on ze headquarters of La Guglé, where they will gloriously SURRENDER and force ze 'ricains to feed them at their own expense! Allons, enfants de la Patrie! Le jour de merde et arrivé! ZUT ALORS!
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
First, lets figure out what kind of money Google makes on news. Go to news.google.com. Hmm... no ads. Now search for a news item. Right now, I see Franki Valli is highly trending on Google. Thats as commercial a search term as I can think of, since the reason the old guy with the squeaky voice is on is because of a revival on Broadway. So, I search for it... and... wait for it - no ads. Of course, on other terms, YMMV - but there appears to not be enough money being made to pay for the bandwidth. Now, clearly, to be the search engine of choice, you want to be able to index and respond to queries about everything - at least, anything available. But if Google turns off indexing of French news sites, then they are going to lose *almost nothing* and probably cut net costs marginally. at least in the short term. Even better for Google, and a few media companies - and possibly inevitable (?) - is if Google cuts deals with some French media so that those media sites would refund to Google any cost that Google had to pay the French Govt. Hell, double that cost and charge them that. If I owned a small French media company, I would sign up for that in a heartbeat... and watch the dominant search engine send all the traffic my way, raise my advertising rates, and send the old guard French media out of business. Also, for Google, this would ensure they had the breadth of coverage of topics they need... and another source of revenue of Google.
u in honor is honour, as neighbour, as colour, etc
American English spelling did not lie to conform to Canadian, Australian, British or International English.
I just go with the flow. When I write to people outside of the USA, I add the missing letters.m
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
woosh.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.