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.'"

Comments

Re:But where to get it

[Issarlk]

There's no french money, there's only european money. That's the problem.

Easy solution french media

[Anonymous Coward]

Just put a complete paywall up over your news. Then you don't have to worry about anyone ever reading it again.

Re:Easy solution french media

[toutankh]

Actually good independent newspapers exist in France and some of them do a great work. The best example is "Le Canard Enchaîné", which has existed for almost a century. Although self-qualified "satyrical", this weekly is at the origin of many scandals in France in the past century. The journalists do amazing investigations, you won't see ads on any page (to ensure independence), it cannot be read electronically (although there is a website including a poor-quality version of the front page). And guess what, people are willing to pay for a paper version with no ads and quality content. They release accounts and balance every year, and unlike every mainstream newspaper using tons of ads and an electronic version, the balance is positive every year.

By the way, politicians are afraid of it, too. I'm not sure there are equivalents in other countries in fact, but maybe someone could enlighten me. For instance, how many national newspapers with 0 ads can you find in the USA?

Re:Easy solution french media

[pod]

0. We're too cheap and now all our media is funded by advertisers, while we wonder why it's not accountable to the public anymore.

Re:Easy solution french media

[Extreme_biker0]

In the UK there is Private Eye which sound very similar; satirical with good journalism, and often the source of nationwide scandals.

Re:Easy solution french media

[benjfowler]

Private Eye is awesome. There are very few publications that deliberately go looking for the shit quite like Ian Hislop and friends.

I've heard by word-of-mouth that they've got the biggest pile of cash to defend against libel lawsuits of any publisher in the UK.

Significant, given how slap-happy the rich cunts are in this country (and in much of Russia and the Middle East), and how fond they are of taking advantage of Britain's broken libel laws to attack their critics in court.

Re:Easy solution french media

[uburoy]

Le monde diplomatique : http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/
Médiacritique : http://www.acrimed.org/article3686.html

(sorry for erroneous anomyous post)

Re:Easy solution french media

[youn]

they can even keep things free with robots exclusion files

careful what you wish for

[Crypto Gnome]

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".

Re:careful what you wish for

[GrpA]

No, a better idea would be to still have them, except when you click on the link, it takes you to a page where it asks for your credit card details before taking you to the link, and identifies the person responsible for the law.

*that* would be poetic...

GrpA

Re:careful what you wish for

[Derekloffin]

Then put it behind a pay wall, or a robots.txt. If you can't be bothered with either of those two things then don't bitch that it gets indexed by a search engine.

Re:careful what you wish for

[Anonymous Coward]

> I just summarized it and provided a link.

You make it sound so simple. If you think you can do that better, do it. And get those ten thousand bucks yourself.

Google is doing something that _no one else in the world is able to do half as well as them_. I think they deserve their money for that. The "simple summary work" that you point out is way more complex than you make it sound.

So no, you are not entitled to a piece of that simply because you wrote an article.

Re:careful what you wish for

[stoolpigeon]

That's a completely backwards approach.

People don't use google because they know you write great articles. They use google because they are looking for something. The people writing on the other hand, really want people to see what they wrote. Google provides a free service to those writers, bringing in viewers without charging them anything. How can google do this? How can they provide this amazing service for free with all the hardware and bandwidth required? They charge advertisers.

If a site is so popular and so important that people do just want information from them - they wont be going via google, they'll be coming straight in.

If google were rehosting the full content - I could see it. But if they are just linking to things on the WEB - well, it should be obvious that what this law does is break the web. That's what really gets me. These news outlets see the web as a way to make money but they don't want anyone else to benefit from the information they provide unless they get a cut.

Following this logic, investors who read the business page should pay a percentage of their profits to the newspapers as well.

Re:careful what you wish for

[viperidaenz]

If you wrote an amazing article, and no one ever read it because they couldn't find it, why did you write it?

You then complain that a search engine is making money from your content and not compensating you, when they have told you exactly how to stop your articles from being put in their search results already (robots.txt) You want to have your cake and eat it too.
If you expect a search engine to pay for your content, expect them to ignore it completely. Watch as your userbase disappears and nobody reads your content or views your ads. You should be paying Google for every visitor they refer to your website, not the other way around. They spent resources crawling your website and indexing it and they sent your visitors to you, who click on your ads. You should be compensating the search engines.

Re:careful what you wish for

[infinitelink]

I have mod points and I would mod you down because your logic stinks rather than because I disagree, but I think it is worth commenting on:

Google is not making money on their content. Google is making money on the key words entered into their search engine, returning relevant advertisements to...the key words. The people go to the search engine to find content, but Google serves LINKS to others' content (not the content) most relevant to their search terms in order to ancillarily have the chance to serve ads relevant to the users' searches: note that there is an exchange going on here, though intangible and only conceptual: as per the user agreement between users and Google, the user gets to use their search mechanism, and Google gets to serve ads: only the users, therefore, could possibly claim to be owed anything, except they're being provided service, so rather it's they who should be paying (and are with their eyeballs).

What all this means, is exactly what others are saying around here: they just drop the French media, and not do those numbskulls the favor of facilitating contact by other eyeballs with their content: Google provides them with value, not vice versa: I would find poetic a de-listing by Google adding facilities that they may, for a recurring fee, opt-in to the search engine results.

Google only wants the few seconds they get with a visitor to serve ads, and these days they've plenty of their own content (and services, and deals with other content providers e.g. on Youtube) that they don't perhaps need to index and serve results pertaining those other media: I doubt they want to do that because it would make their searches slightly less useful to some, but when people start attacking a big dog to get a cut for something those attackers aren't due any share of, and syndicate with just-as-greedy politicians (who just want more money to spend), then it is time to say "bye bye".

Also, when Google actually puts ads relevant not to keyword searches but content itself, it is by the permission/request of the owner, and the owners are compensated on the click-throughs according to the terms of their agreements. Thus, we see here mere greed, gross ignorance, and unsurprising indignation at sensing a situation unfairness that could only be understood as such by the ignorant.

Re:careful what you wish for

[viperidaenz]

Following this logic, investors who read the business page should pay a percentage of their profits to the newspapers as well.

Don't give them ideas, you know they'll try it. They have a failing business model to prop up. Just look at the recording industry...

Re:careful what you wish for

[1u3hr]

Or is my only obligation to you a link that may or may not provide you with revenue?

Actually, not even that.

Lets say that my summary of your work brings me a ten thousand bucks. Shouldn't you be entitled to a cut of that ten thousand bucks?

When newspapers do a review of a movie or TV show, do they give a cut of ther advertising revenues to the producers? Actually, the film makers will give the papers al kinds of inducements to help them do more articles. same for book reviews. How about restaurant reviews? Should newspapers pay the restaurants when they do them?

This whole thing is idiotic. Google just gives a sentence or two at most of the article. It's fair use in any country that recognises the concept.

The French media could block Google with Robots.txt and set up their own news search portal and then they can sell ads and divide up the income, if there's so much money to be had.

Re:careful what you wish for

[JasterBobaMereel]

It's like you wrote it on a huge billboard on a main street, and did not expect passers by to pay, but when someone put up a sign pointing to it then you want to charge them....?

Re:careful what you wish for

[Sun]

I have mod points and I would mod you down because your logic stinks rather than because I disagree, but I think it is worth commenting on

I, too, have mod points. I do not agree with the above statement. Does that mean I should mod you down? In fact, I'm discarding all of my moderation done so far just so I can point this out to you.

You do not mod someone down merely because their logic stinks. If the person was trolling, that would be something different. GP did not seem to be, however.

The idea behind mod points is not to decide who is right. The idea is to weed out those comments unhelpful to constructive discussion, and keep those that promote it.

Now, had GP been marked "+5 insightful", I might be tempted to hit that "overrated" button. At the time of this writing, however, GP is +2 with no visible moderation, which is, in fact, a little below what it deserves, considering I'm sure others feel the same way, and considering the responses were reasoned and to the point (not that I can fix it now, that I've answered you, of course).

Don't abuse the moderation system. If someone writes a comment you don't agree with, just leave it alone. Disagreeing with you is not the same as trolling.

Shachar

Re:careful what you wish for

[guttentag]

The Washington Post was absolutely livid about the Drudge Report "deep linking" to stories on its Web site in the late 90s. It tried blocking him at first, but he'd find ways around it. Eventually they realized he was driving a huge amount of traffic to the site, which resulted in advertising dollars for them. But they were so used to being "the only game in town" in Washington DC (The Washington Times doesn't count; it's a church-funded instrument that has never operated in the black founded in 1982 by a guy who claimed to be the messiah) that they had this mentality that they drove traffic places, not the other way around. Eventually they recognized that they had no choice but to look the other way while Drudge continued deep linking, but a few people on staff still grumbled about him being a parasite profiting off of their work.

France and the U.S. have very different ideas about the media and intellectual property (for example, publishers in France set book prices and the bookstores can't discount them). There's a reason bookstores aren't dying there like they are in the states -- in fact, physical book sales are up. TFA in this case doesn't specify whether the complaint is about Google scraping entire pages from the site (for previews) or just displaying the brief summary, but that would seem to be where a line might need to be drawn. If a Google user can read an entire news story by squinting at the preview on Google's site without ever visiting the publisher that paid for the content to be written, I could see the French having an issue with that. But if their complaint is that you can search the text of their articles, see a brief summary of the article that directs you to the publisher's site, they're going to need to wake up and realize that Google (and similar search engines) are driving visitors and euros to them without having to make payments directly.

Would a restaurant complain about trademark infringement if the city put up signs with their logo directing people to the restaurant? Well, maybe in France.

Re:careful what you wish for

[Grishnakh]

If a site is so popular and so important that people do just want information from them - they wont be going via google, they'll be coming straight in.

Actually, that's not always true. There's a lot of people who use Google (or whatever the default search engine is) for everything. Even if they want to go to, say, cnn.com, they'll type "cnn" into the search bar and go there that way. Or worse, you'll find people who actually type "cnn.com" into a google search. Don't ask me why.

Even so, this doesn't mean the destination sites should be getting a cut of Google's advertising profit. If they want money, they can put up a paywall, or have their own advertising on their site.

Re:careful what you wish for

[moronoxyd]

They take the content for free then charge money for it (indirectly through advertising), giving nothing back to the source.

Wrong.
They direct millions and millions of people to the websites of those publishers.
And the publishers want those hits. Otherwise they could easily stop Google from doing so by using the robots.txt.

What actually happens is that the publishers want BOTH: Google redirecting people to their sites and getting money from Google for doing so.

Re:careful what you wish for

[HungryHobo]

It isn't highway robbery when you hand someone your money and say "please take this, I want you to have it"

Don't want google's "highway robbery"? change one line on your site and it's done, google won't be a problem any more for you.

these sites should pay google, these newspapers get valuable traffic thanks to google, they have ads on their pages which they make money from every time google provide a new set of eyes to look at their page. But they don't pay google, they expect to get this service for free.

Re:careful what you wish for

[sumdumass]

Your right, Google is making money off the content. They are using your work in the process. It's sort of like a taxi driver putting a sign on his cab saying he will take people to your out of the way poetry readings and not waving the cab fair. Maybe he puts a few lines of your poetry on the sign to catch the eye of your fans too.

Does he owe you money? Or is bringing customers to your venue enough?

Re:careful what you wish for

[gl4ss]

viewers are how they pay back. you pretty much need to visit the source sites.
besides, all those french newspapers could easily exclude themselves from being searched.

but they want to be indexed, because they want the viewers. but they also want money for spamming their headlines with popular search terms, that's whats fucked up about them.

Re:careful what you wish for

[Anonymous Coward]

well said. They just don't want to charge and lose their oligarchical control over news. Why make customers pay, and have to endure new cheaper competition when you can make Google pay. Also, these media companies are free to use ad sense and other advertising platforms are they now, and recoup a lot of the money??

Re:careful what you wish for

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, bro, but what does it have to do with topic? It would be more like Amazon showing a cover and snippet from your book with a link to buy it from you and you getting furious because they're also showing their own ads alongside it - what the fuck, not everyone looking at that page buys my book, but everyone brings a few cents to Amazon? Unfair!

Re:careful what you wish for

[Rhaban]

But that's not how Google works. They take the content for free then charge money for it (indirectly through advertising), giving nothing back to the source. They're a middle-man that never pays their suppliers.

They don't take content: they extracct a small part of the content (the title and a small summary). That's called fair use.

Newspapers do the exact same thing: they take some content created by someone else (like a rioter burning a car), take a small part of that content (a photograph of the burning car), then charge users to see this extract (by having them pay for the newspaper), and give nothing back to the source.

Re:careful what you wish for

[jedidiah]

This is like saying that Apple is stealing content because your movie trailer has the only interesting bits of your movie. So people only watch your trailer and don't bother to actually go see the movie.

Google provides trailers (like Hollywood.com or Apple) and directions to the cinema.

Google is free advertising.

Re:careful what you wish for

[sacrilicious]

say you wrote an amazing article. I summarize it and slap advertisements on it and provide a link to your original article. Lets say that my summary of your work brings me a ten thousand bucks. Shouldn't you be entitled to a cut of that ten thousand bucks?

What if I win a marathon, and you run an article on it with ads that end up getting you thousands of dollars... shouldn't I be entitled to some of that money for having done the newsworthy thing? My marathon training cost me enormous amounts of money, as well as true sweat and pain.

What if instead of running a marathon, I throw a benefit auction for children with leukemia, and you make money off of making news/ads over that? Might the dying children be entitled to some of the money you made?

What if I rob a bank, and you run an article on that which brings you ad money? What if your refusal to share that ad money with me makes me decide never to rob a bank again unless you change your policy?

Re:careful what you wish for

[Half-pint HAL]

They [Google] direct millions and millions of people to the websites of those publishers. And the publishers want those hits.

You clearly weren't paying attention to your Introduction to Web Design class: the success of a website is not in the "hits" it's in reader retention, or stickiness. Google as a basic search engine was defensible. However, Google News is having a marked negative effect on the publications it links to. By indexing so effeciently, it dramatically reduces reader retention. People don't stay on the newspaper site, they go back to Google and find more news there. Without reader retention, the news sites find it very very difficult to attract advertisers. The news sites can't make money. Google is leaching money out of the system and away from the content creators. So it's OK for webshops, it's OK for fansites, but it's a massive problem for professional journalism.

Re:careful what you wish for

[phayes]

I agree with the GP. While it is true that disagreement is not a sufficient reason for down modding, ignorance is.

When I read /. it is not to trudge through posts that are ignorant, but to be able to benefit from the insightful ones. Yes, we should mostly up-mod according to the guidelines but ignorance is sufficient justification in some cases for down-modding with overrated. In other cases, a reply is the best answer as the GP demonstrated.

Re:careful what you wish for

[shoemilk]

Wow, just... wow. I'm no Libertarian, but that article made me ill. Subsidies and government mandated price-fixing? Why don't they get on with it and make libraries illegal and require everyone to buy a fucking book a week?

Looks like a train wreck in the making...

[paenguin]

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.

Re:Looks like a train wreck in the making...

[lightknight]

I see you are still young, padawan.

Yes, they would cut their noses off to spite their faces. Happens all the time.

Ever have a boss who denied a reasonable request that the rest of the team needed fulfilled before continuing work, if only to exercise his / her arbitrary powers of decision? For some people, it's less about the money, and more about the power. Why serve in heaven when you can rule in hell?

Re:Looks like a train wreck in the making...

[Idaho]

Of course they're not that dense.

This is all about getting the government to help you put your hand in the next guy's pocket.

Re:Looks like a train wreck in the making...

[91degrees]

Google is making money from indexing their sites. The newspapers believe that without them, Google will be substantially less competitive, and so feel they can extort Google for a cut if the money it makes from their information.

Perhaps they're wrong, so Google can stop indexing the newspapers. If, however, indexing French newspapers is considered an important requirement for web users, and their rivals offer that functionality, then Google will suffer and their rival will benefit.

This is just a pissing match between media giants.

Government != people

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop saying "the French" and say "the French government" instead.

Being governed by incompetent morons doesn't make us so.

Re:Government != people

[SeeSchloss]

Have you missed the part where this laws doesn't exist and it's just a bunch of companies trying to get the government to write it? And another company trying to get the government not to write it. What does it have to do yet with the incompetent morons who were voted into power? We can talk again once the law actually exists (which won't happen).

Re:Government != people

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"Every country has the government it deserves (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite) "

-- Joseph de Maistre

Re:If I were Google

[Ambvai]

This sounds familiar...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/07/16/0028255/belgian-newspapers-delisted-on-google

De Gaulle

[surfcow]

"How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?"
  -- Charles De Gaulle

Re:Google's Biz Model

[Luckyo]

Personally I'm on the fence with this one. On one hand, if there was functional competition in searching market, and one company delisted sites hence reducing quality of service, people would flock to competitors and site would lose. Unfortunately google does in fact have a de facto (and at least according to some EU organs de jure) monopoly on search.

On the other hand, while being a monopoly isn't illegal, it does apply heavy limits to what you can do. For example, leveraging your monopoly to get better terms is often illegal. This is a clear-cut case of monopoly leveraging to strong-arm the media outlets. Granted, google is making a killing from its business model and is unlikely to be willing to part with a cut of a cake, especially considering that if it gives cut to one party, it will likely end up having to give such a cut to everyone. This would demolish google.

Either way, this is a very difficult case to call either way, there's far more to it then meets the eye on the first glance. Both sides have very compelling arguments to bring to the table.

Re:Google's Biz Model

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit. Google doesn't "slap advertisements on content that other people create." Google slaps advertisements on their search pages, which link to content that other people create. Google offers up a number of tools to allow people to avoid Google links to their content. What's happening here is that they want Google to pay them money because Google is making money. However, here's the thing. Since the actual content is still on their servers, if someone wants to actually view the content, they have to go to the non-Google servers. People are welcome to put advertisements there.

Google should tell the French media that Google will be happy to pay a share of advertising revenues to the content holders as soon as the content holders pay Google for linking to their content. Until then, they're delisted. Who needs whom more?

Re:Google's Biz Model

[whydavid]

Your marginalizing of Google's role in driving traffic to these websites and making it possible for user's to find content suggests that you have no background in - or even passing familiarity with - the field of information retrieval. Google provides a service, of real value, with very real technical merit, and profits off of that by placing ads on the results page. They are not appropriating content for this beyond that necessary to allow a user to decide whether or not a search result is relevant. Meanwhile, these French news outlets benefit from billions of click-throughs and anyone searching for French-language news benefits from being able to find it quickly. And of course neither the users nor the listed web sites have to pay a penny for this service. There is a good reason these nuts are alone in challenging this business model. Referrals from Google probably make up a huge portion of their web traffic, while searches for French news probably contribute a small fraction of 1% to Google's ad revenue. Let's see how the fallout from this fight affects each party.

robots.txt

[FatLittleMonkey]

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Re:robots.txt

[Sqr(twg)]

Actually, it's:

User-agent: Googlebot-News
Disallow: /

That way, you get to stay in the search index, while being excluded from news. (source)

I will pay Google to

[future assassin]

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....

Re:Google's Biz Model

[asdf7890]

Google's Biz Model is to slap advertisements on content that other people create. Google makes a stink ton of money doing this.

And some are just plain green with envy that Google's business model is more-or-less working and theirs hasn't really done so for a while now. This isn't about creator's rights, this is playground-like cries of "not fair!".

Since the first news papers media outlets have taken freely available information then charged for it and wrapped adverts around it in order to pay for the distribution of that information (and making a profit too). Now someone else is playing their game and playing it better than them they are crying foul. Google's adverts are no more wrong then their adverts, issue prices or subscription costs: in both cases someone is profiting from the act of making information easier to access for those who pay (which to my mind is fair enough in both cases).

Just because Google has *indexed* the content doesn't some how give them the right to profit from that content (as they do)

Are you suggesting that they do all that work indexing the content and giving you easy access to it for free? They aren't a charity you know.

Are you saying that news papers should not carry adverts either? Or charge for each issue more than cost price for manufacture and distribution? After all, all they've done is collate a bunch of information and by the same argument that doesn't give them the right to expect to profit from it.

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.

With words like "appropriate" you talk like they are pulling a FunnyJunk and taking all the content, deliberately removing attribution & all other links to the original. Google present the headline and perhaps the first sentence or so, along with where they go the news from and a full link to the originating site.

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.

Even if it doesn't break the Internet, it is completely unnecessary and will just add complication and therefore cost. If the news outlets don't want Google to use their content in the manner that Google uses content then they should just ask to be de-listed, or use the facility that already exists in robots.txt to tell Google not to index the content that they wish to keep for themselves. Problem solved. The thing is, this is not what they want: they want to be in Google's index but on their terms, terms that would help them perpetuate their out-of-date business model.

Re:Google's Biz Model

[sFurbo]

If only there was some way to nicely ask Google not to use a page that the content providers could use.

Re:But where to get it

[Taco Cowboy]

There's no french money, there's only european money.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2145882/How-tell-euro-note-comes--German-doesnt-beat-Greek.html

If the number of the euro note has a "U" in front, it's French euro.

Example:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/17/article-0-13243611000005DC-4_468x286.jpg

Re:Google's Biz Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots.txt only removes links to their content. I think they want to opt out while making sure everyone else is opted out as well so that Google doesn't send traffic to their competition instead.

A moronic law like this would achieve just that.

Re:But where to get it

[ciderbrew]

You dream of being as out of money as the french.. TICK TOCK - http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Re:But where to get it

[lexa1979]

Screw the french fries, they're Belgian !

Re:But where to get it

[sumdumass]

Are you saying you like Big Butts?

Re:But where to get it

[DJRumpy]

They'll end up liking the taste of crow. Idiots. Without search engines, the online content will never be found, shrivel up, and die. It's a symbiotic relationship and punishing one side is just going to hurt the other.

A child can understand that concept.

Re:But where to get it

[Half-pint HAL]

I think you're missing the point. It's all well and good saying sites will "shrivel up and die" without search engine results, but right not they're shrivelling up an dieing due to a lack of money. Google isn't just a search engine it's the "front page" to most people's internet. It's undermined the "stickiness" of everyone else's site, making it very difficult for individual sites to survive on ad revenue.

Google isn't "symbiotic", it's "parasitic", because while it appears to offer short-term benefits, it devalues individual sites (especially news sites) and destroys brand loyalty (I personally read stories from 5 different news sites this morning thanks to Google News -- good for me, bad for the news sites).

Sites don't earn money on eyeballs alone, you know....

Re:But where to get it

[RabidReindeer]

They'll end up liking the taste of crow. Idiots. Without search engines, the online content will never be found, shrivel up, and die. It's a symbiotic relationship and punishing one side is just going to hurt the other.

A child can understand that concept.

Don't tell Rupert Murdoch that.

Re:But where to get it

[toriver]

In that case they can just add a simple robots,txt to tell the "parasite" to go away. And then start waving their fucking magic wand around to make people discover the site directly.

Re:But where to get it

[Bengie]

Google isn't "symbiotic", it's "parasitic"

Just like the bacteria in your gut. Go a head, take a ton of antibiotics and see how well that goes.

Re:But where to get it

[WindBourne]

Just out of curiosity, why exactly do you think that France is going after the ad money? Because the majority of search engines belong to America. They had one approach on how to do it, but decided that it hurt their small businesses so decided not to do that. IOW, France is looking at a way to help their press (illegally, by WTO treaty) by going after American companies money. That is pure nationalism.

Re:But where to get it

[Ironhandx]

Google has the lions share of the market, but its market share for searchs as of September 2012 is 65%.... this is at minimum 15% shy of anyone being able to scream Monopoly!

What Google is doing here right now is saying out loud and directed at some idiot French government officials what EVERY search engine will do if this comes to pass.

The only people that will try to get this enforced are the old entrenched newspapers and their sites, and this will only bring about their downfall even faster, so bring it on!

Re:But where to get it

[Arancaytar]

Salted with the tears of a bald eagle. Deepfried in light sweet crude.

Re:But where to get it

[Dragon Bait]

Screw the french fries, they're Belgian !

I have always wondered how the Belgians felt about our labeling their dish as "French fries"? If I was Belgian I kind of think that would annoy me.

The "French" part comes the type of cut of the potato. French cut: sliced lengthwise into long, thin strips.

Re:But where to get it

[dsvick]

I have always wondered how the Belgians felt about our labeling their dish as "French fries"? If I was Belgian I kind of think that would annoy me.

Yes, but we gave them the credit for those big waffles, so it's all good.

Re:But where to get it

[Simon Brooke]

The issue is that serious news gathering, in the old way, is expensive. Keeping a network of reporters distributed round the world in places where news events are liable to happen costs money. Good newspapers have this network by legacy and tradition. They still see value in the networks. So they want to keep them. But as disruptive technologies like Twitter affect the way people consume news, the number of eyeballs on the output produced by those expensive journalistic networks is declining. Because the number of eyeballs is declining, and because other opportunities for advertising are becoming available, the amount that advertisers are prepared to pay for adverts on the 'newspaper' sites is declining. This has precisely nothing to do with search, and it has to do with Google only because Google has made itself a significant platform for advertising. It has to do, fundamentally, with audience share.

Re:But where to get it

[kelemvor4]

In that case they can just add a simple robots,txt to tell the "parasite" to go away. And then start waving their fucking magic wand around to make people discover the site directly.

Because they don't want their sites excluded, they want to force some other company (google) to pay them money for the content since actual readers refuse to do it.

Re:But where to get it

[Local ID10T]

Arguable statements? It's pretty well established now that free newspaper sites are failing. They do not earn their keep. It is a known fact, a done deal.

If a site's traffic is not generating sufficient revenue to pay it's bills, then operating a website site is not a viable business model. Sometimes that's OK, as the site is not the revenue generating arm of the business, but more of a promotional expense. If a business model does not work, you change the business model.

Who said "lots of money"? I'm talking adequate money. And as for constructive proposals... how about the RTFA...?

It is a pretty short article. nearly half of it is quoted in the summary above. What is not quoted doesn't include any constructive ideas. "Gimme!" is really not a constructive idea.

Pay the content providers a cut of advertising revenue for providing the content that makes Google News the most visited news site on the planet.

Google (as a search provider) has the data to determine which links are (or are statistically likely to become) popular, and provides aggregated lists (such as their news page) as starting points for people to find content without having to actually run a search query for "things I might be interested in". Google then sells advertizing space on their site, but the greater value still lies in the data they collect about people using their services -it allows them to develop new services that people will want to use (thus generating even more data for them) and sells access to portions of that data to others. It is the selling of distilled portions of this data that makes Google money.

As for requiring a share of these revenues in exchange for allowing Google to include links to a site's content in an aggregated list. I don't believe it is legally valid under current international business practices. Further I do not expect Google to agree under any circumstances. It is a line in the sand for them, beyond which lies the slippery slope of every website being paid to have their content indexed/aggregated by search providers, or indeed being paid by anyone who indirectly makes use of their sites existence as part of their own business! It would spell the end for companies that live on "the Google method" (i.e. providing services to users in exchange for collecting data about what they do with those services, and then selling the results of that market research data.)

Re:But where to get it

[k2r]

And France has universal healthcare and a life expectancy 3 years higher than the US.
And about the same unemployment rate.

Firing people isn't all what's important in life...

The French newspapers seem to be forgetting...

[Larry_Dillon]

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.

Re:But where to get it

[KingMotley]

For Americans:
French Fries are long, thin, and mostly rectangular. Like these: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/what-are-french-fries.htm
Crinkle cut french fries are like normal french fries with a zigzag edge. Like these: http://laughingsquid.com/crinkle-cut-french-fry-shaped-cakes-with-raspberry-ketchup/
Potato Wedges are shorter, fatter, and wedge shaped. Like these: http://americanfood.about.com/od/potatosidedishrecipes/r/Potato_Wedges_Recipe.htm
Potato Chips are fried completely throughout, flat and wide, more like fried potato shavings. Like these:http://www.kettlebrand.com/our_products/#/our_products/?pid=3

Hope that helps

Re:After the law passes the French Papers complain

[cpghost]

I'd rather expect a classy: "Oh, merde...!" (spoken with a Patrick Steward accent).

Revenue streams

[jklovanc]

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.