Brazilian Newspapers Leave Google News En Masse

Dupple writes "In light of the recent story regarding Google threatening a French media ban after France proposed that search engines should pay for content, it seems a similar thing is happening in Brazil, with numerous papers leaving Google News. The controversy fueled one of the most intense debates during the Inter American Press Association's 68th General Assembly, which took place from Oct. 12 to 16 in São Paulo. On one side of the debate were defenders of news companies' authoring rights, like German attorney Felix Stang, who said, 'platforms like Google's compete directly with newspapers and magazines because they work like home pages and use content from them.' On the other, Google representatives said their platform provides a way to make journalistic content available to more people. According to Marcel Leonardi, the company's public policies director, Google News channels a billion clicks to news sites around the world."

Comments

Let them

[jeffy210]

They'll see what happens when their visits drop. People can't be expected to remember every paper that there is and go to each individual site when attempting to find a specific story. This will only be to the papers' detriment.

Re:Let them

[MozeeToby]

Why don't they just put headlines and first paragraphs on one page and set robots.txt to allow search engines to index it, then put the full articles on a different page with indexing not allowed. Google's crawler would get the headline and synopsis and the papers would get advertising from everyone who was interested enough to read more than a few sentences.

Re:Let them

[verbatim]

Yep. Google doesn't show the entire article, they show enough content to drive viewers to the article. It's up to the individual sites to retain those visitors, not Google.

Newspapers should be paying Google for the service of indexing and driving customers to them.

Re:Let them

[Baloroth]

Why don't they just put headlines and first paragraphs on one page and set robots.txt to allow search engines to index it, then put the full articles on a different page with indexing not allowed. Google's crawler would get the headline and synopsis and the papers would get advertising from everyone who was interested enough to read more than a few sentences.

That's basically what Google does already: just puts headlines and 1-2 sentences from the start, with a link to TFA. The newspapers don't even want that much.

Re:Let them

[Anonymous Coward]

Because putting in the effort to find a technical solution is a lot harder than complaining to your politicians.

Re:Let them

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just put headlines and first paragraphs on one page....

Have you actually *been* to news.google.com ??? Didn't think so.

Google News is nothing more than an aggregator for news sites. They provide headline and first sentence and a link to the actual news site.

What the news sites are bitching about is people go to google to look at what is happening instead of their main pages. News sites provide the food but they don't make the menu anymore and that is the problem.

Re:Let them

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They'll see what happens when their visits drop. People can't be expected to remember every paper that there is and go to each individual site when attempting to find a specific story. This will only be to the papers' detriment.

I suspect that, just as everyone is above average and thinks that their children are atypically cute, all the newspapers harbor the dream that they will beat the odds and get to be a 'Portal' for all those precious consumer eyeballs, just like Yahoo or AOL sometime before the turn of the millennium, rather than bleeding subscribers or contributing a sentence or two of scrapings to people's search results...

Re:Let them

[Anonymous Coward]

They should start paying website owners and creators too. If we didn't make websites, they would have nothing to link in their main search either. It is not like there is some mutual relationship that benefits both otherwise...

Re:Let them

[crazyjj]

To me, the whole thing to me sounds really arrogant. "Our paper is so popular that we don't need Google!" Yeah, famous last words. If you're not on Google these days, you had may as well be invisible.

Re:Let them

[geekoid]

no Google should not pay. Google just show a headline and the first bit. The reader then clicks and goes to the website.
Google is driving people to the site. If I had a business that could double your reader, you would gladly pay me.

Google does it for free.

Re:Let them

[Anonymous Coward]

we certainly don't want fewer sources of opinion

I do. They can shove their opinions, just give me the facts and I'll make up my own opinions.

Re:Let them

[pmontra]

Actually I think that big newspapers with recognized brands will get more page hits because they'll be the hubs people go to read news. Small news sites will suffer. On my country's google news page there are articles of sites I never heard about and I'll never remember if they get out of google news. But they are linked there and I click them as often as big news sites.

Re:Let them

[MBGMorden]

Particularly when you boil the situation down to the most basic premise - people are still visiting their site. They're literally made at Google for making it too easy for people to find what they actually WANT from that site. They want the users to have to wade through their own poor interface for a given amount of time - seeing their ads - before they finally find the content.

Forcing your customers into a more difficult path for your own benefit with no incentive to them will not work well. Never has, never will.

Re:Let them

[jkflying]

They should pay Google on a per-click-through basis for the advertising, surely? After all, Google just provides a thumbnail, a headline and the first sentence.

Re:Let them

[chipschap]

No kidding. And newspapers wonder why they have declining fortunes. Then they fall back on the old answer: let's legislate / litigate a solution instead of tackling the real problem.

Re:Let them

[just_a_monkey]

This could be a problem for us, the consumers, if the content creators have to ... do less research, and/or provide less depth

If we are talking about mainstream media, I doubt that is possible. So we are safe.

Re:Let them

[stephanruby]

They'll see what happens when their visits drop.

That actually won't happen. None of the sites mentioned are actually blocking Google from indexing their sites. They may have stopped providing nicely formatted headlines to Google News, but they haven't dared blocking Google to those same articles with a robots.txt through their online sites (which essentially contains the same newspaper content, plus some extra blog content which does not normally appear in the official version of their newspapers).

Essentially, they're hoping to lead a Worldwide revolt, hoping that others will jump into the fray and finish the suicidal charge they've just started, but they themselves are keeping their options opened and their page rank mostly intact, just in case the revolt doesn't work out.

Re:Let them

[luncheon]

This. The IAPA is just a CIA-funded lobby organization formed by all the Latin American right wing print media owners (that 1300 newspaper thing on the Wikipedia article is misleading, since it represents just a couple of monopolic media groups per country). They are the Fox News of Latin America, operating from the US. I think that their biggest fear apart from the supposed traffic (and revenue) loss is the archival capacity of Google, since with an external site linking to their news content it's harder for them to control the way they show the news (and the possibility of modifying archive media).

Re:Let them

[hypergreatthing]

Google should pay the newspapers for the content, and the newspapers should pay Google for indexing and pointing people to the content. And the cost for both should be equal.
Ohh, that's how it is right now? ok
If they want to shoot themselves in the foot let them. They'll come crawling back.

Re:Let them

[Solandri]

They should start paying website owners and creators too. If we didn't make websites, they would have nothing to link in their main search either.

There are basically two types of websites: Free and paywalled.

If your website is free, you're publishing it for people to read without any expectation of payment (except perhaps from ads run on your site). Why should Google have to pay you for viewing your site when nobody else does?

If you website is paywalled, then Google can't index it, so it's not going to show up in their search results and you have nothing to complain about.

And if you're one of those people with a free website but still don't want Google to index it, then just drop a robots.txt file in it.

It is not like there is some mutual relationship that benefits both otherwise...

There is a mutual relationship that benefits both. It's just that the "both" aren't the people you think it is. Google's relationship is with the person searching the web. The person gets the benefit of finding stuff on the web more easily, and Google gets the benefit of advertising dollars. Once Google delivers the viewer to your site, what you do with him and how you monetize it is entire up to you. Google has no relationship with the content provider beyond what a regular viewer has (they read the content).

Re:Let them

[dsvick]

Aggregate sites do drive viewers to articles, but it may be that they are driving them in a way that is not profitable for the news sites themselves.

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, there is no difference between one person staying on the site and viewing 10 pages vs 10 separate people viewing a single page each. I'd even be willing to bet that the news sites get more out of it than google does. When I go to google news I usually hit the page one time, scroll through it and click on whatever articles interest me. Those sites all open in another tab/window, the google news page doesn't change or refresh so I'm only giving them a single hit, while the news sites are all getting one. I don't see the inequity.

I'm of the opinion that the vast majority of news articles are pretty much the same across news sites anyway and I really don't care (too much) where I'm reading it from, so I don't go out of my way to remember any specific ones. If they are at the top of the pile on google, well then, they're the one that gets clicked. and if they aren't listed, they'll never get my click. If it weren't for google I wouldn't even know they existed, I'd end up at some small number news sites that I could remember and found reasonably unbiased, odds are it would be one of the big name sites, or more than one just to add a little balance. While that is great for the foxnews and cnns of the world, it is not so good for eastNowhereActionnews. But, hey, if they want to go it without google, more power to them, there are probably a couple of dozen people there that know their url and will visit it.

Re:Let them

[matrim99]

The "problem" is shifting useage patterns. The solution is to shift the business model accordingly. Blaming Google on user's constantly changing behavior is easier than adjusting a business model.

Re:Let them

[Bengie]

Perhaps no direct money made, but added value to the platform as a whole. Not to mention data-mining user patterns.

Re:Let them

[DigitAl56K]

This is a blatant misrepresentation of the situation through omission of key facts, aka lie of omission. Google's core operating principle is to define each person and his/her interests and then serve ads based on these interests.

The amount of information they get from knowing what news each person follows and in what way is enormously valuable to google.

Let's say for the sake of argument that's true. So what? Newspaper X objects, removes itself, and Google still learns this because the end user _still_ searches for news and still clicks on results. Newspaper X, Y, Z object, there are a dozen more behind them. Let's say all of them collectively object, and Google News can't show news results for Brazil - an unlikely scenario. What will end users do when they can't see the headlines all on one page? They will still use conventional search to look for new, so Google still learns user preference.

Your whole line of argument is worthless. In fact, it's worse than that, it's backwards, because - and take a seat because this is really going to blow your mind - if Google knows what type of news you're likely to be interested in it can do a better job of getting you to news sites that serve that content, meaning you spend more time on their pages and perhaps monetize better (e.g. through ads or subscriptions). Yes, Google will deliver a higher "quality" user to you.

Maybe you should stop misrepresenting the situation.

Re:Let them

[bondsbw]

With the robots.txt solution, the way I understand it Google wouldn't even index the full article, and thus text that only appears in the article (not the summary) would not be factored into search results.

This is basically SEO suicide, but whatever... it's their server, they can cry if they want to.

Re:Let them

[Luckyo]

It would be worthless if there was an alternative to google. Because then users would switch to this alternative and see all their old sites.

The concept you're missing here is known as "leveraging a monopoly".

Re:Let them

[farble1670]

compulsory payments

the problem (for news organizations) with this is that news is a commodity now. i can get my news from an indie source that offers it for free or i can get it from the an established organization ... i'm going to pick the free one.

Re:Let them

[FatLittleMonkey]

The Brazilian papers are doing the right thing if they feel that Google news (and similar indexers/aggregators) are costing more clicks/view/revenue than they are bringing in. Opt out. I suspect they are wrong, but they are welcome to try it for awhile. If it doesn't work, they can always change their minds and opt back in.

Unlike the French media, which expects Google to channel views to them for nothing and pay them for the privilege.

My god!

[grnbrg]

How many is a brazilian?!

Re:My god!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Think of it as a multiple of Library of Congress stuffed with Kim Kardashian's butt cheeks . . .

News Corp already tried this and failed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rupert Murdoch blasted Google in the past for featuring his news sites and had them removed. Yet recently, he reversed his decision: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/9566353/Rupert-Murdoch-backs-down-in-war-with-parasite-Google.html

there's an available solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots.txt. You can prohibit google or any reputable search engine from indexing your content.

The POINT of the HTTP protocol is to serve data, but if you don't wanna, it's your machine that gives the data over. It doesn't have to do that. You have full control over that via several different means, from robots.txt to a paywall. There are blacklists and whitelists - what gets given out is under the control of the serving system. It seems a bit insane to voluntarily reply to a request for data, and then get mad that the other side saw the data. If you don't want them to see it, don't offer it up via a protocol whose entire purpose is to transfer data from a server to a requesting machine.

The internet could never have grown as it did if in the beginning everyone was going to subvert the intent of the technical aspects of it.

Re:there's an available solution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Ah, but Robots.txt doesn't allow you to have it both ways.

For, um, totally reasonable reasons that I don't feel obliged to articulate right now, I deserve both the exposure of being listed by Google and payment from Google for listing me!

Sure, I could tell my server nerd to make the changes necessary to stop my content from being 'stolen' in about 30 seconds; but that would deny me the exposure that is my natural right...

Re:there's an available solution

[lightknight]

Hmm. They appear to want a dumbed down search engine, where it provides a link and says "what you are looking for might be on this site, but you'll have to use their crappy built-in search and work to find it, instead us of just linking directly to it." Or they want Google to pay them for having identical content ("We put an AP article up like 3,000 other news sites! We deserve some money! Gimme gimme!"). This is what happens when you let journalists on the web -> they have no grasp or understanding of how or why things are the way they are, and want the techs (servants / slaves) to completely rewrite a design that has worked just fine for decades so that they don't have to think of a new business model.

In a strange way, it reminds me of how the pirates told the musicians, "We aren't your enemies," with some of them believing the pirates and a fair portion of them not. The funny part, loosely related to all this, is that now the musicians are being asked to take an 85% pay cut with compulsory licensing on radio play rights, proving the point.

Let me see if I've got this right...

[Todd Knarr]

The newspapers believe that they have a right to force me to pay for telling someone else that their paper carries a story and what page it's on? I... can't think of a single bit of law supporting that position, anywhere. They certainly have the right to keep me from photocopying their story and handing it out to people, but "the right to be the only entity who can tell others the work exists" isn't something I find anywhere in copyright law.

Re:Let me see if I've got this right...

[captain_nifty]

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
-Heinlein

Maybe this is what we need

[kawabago]

Maybe this will prompt someone to come up with a better way to collect and distribute the news to people without charge. We should not need to pay to find out what is going on in the world around us.

There are biased news everywhere, anyhow

[G3ckoG33k]

look at this article:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57535804/confrontation-may-loom-in-waters-off-israel/

and check how many American news sites report on it via Google:
http://www.google.com/news?q=Ship+to+Gaza+Estelle&lr=English&hl=en

Very very few. So, maybe the Brazilian news sites have something to hide? Filtered news is this news?

That's not the reason to let them.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the reason to let them. If they block Google, then that is their right. At least they're not demanding Google pay to link.

Block Google, enter a robots.txt, make ignoring robots.txt a copyright offence, whatever.

They're entitled to do so.

They're not entitled to rework the entire internet because they don't like how it operates.

It's not a bad system IMO

[NinjaTekNeeks]

Google provides FREE news search feature to consumers, funds and profits from it via ads on search page.
Newspaper gets worldwide exposure which drives (increases) existing ad revenue/views

News companies should be elated about this service, they are basically getting exposure and increased revenue from google's search product without having to pay Google a dime.

Re:It is a curious problem

[geekoid]

"people are less likely than ever to bother checking cnn.com vs going directly to google news. "
false. Google news doesn't give you the whole story only a headline and a sentence or two.

Have you ever been to google news?
https://news.google.com/

"The only way to see the newspaper's side is if you imagine someone make a faux cnn homepage - listing only cnn articles and putting up advertising. That would seem fishy, wouldn't it?"
yes, but that's not happening here, so it isn't relevant.

They'd lose no revenue. No ads on google news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or have you never been on there?

NO ADVERTS.

Google *Search* has adverts. Google *News* doesn't.

So shutting down Google News will not lose ANY clicking on placed ads.

Idiot.

robots.txt

[WaffleMonster]

If you don't like it then stop whining and pull yourselves from google. You have the power don't pretend you don't or don't know that you do.

What is the point of whining when a few lines added to a single text file will solve *all* of your problems?

So....

[gosand]

I suppose Slashdot should pay someone for bringing us this story then?

Re:Google Earnings

[Luckyo]

Consider why google runs news.google.com. It can't be ad revenue from the site, because that particular google site has no ads.

Answer lies in core function of google's official mission - to index everything as recognisably as possible and sell this information in various forms to its clientele. In this case, they get detailed information on what news its main product follows and how. This will often let them build a very good personal profile on many subjects that its customers would be interested in, such as political orientation and strength of conviction in such orientation, sexual orientation, religion and so on.

Seriously, stop and think for a moment what kind of profile can be built on a person based just on their news.google.com preferences and clickthrough. Now consider that google has unified its recognition algorithms to use all its platforms. You could make a very solid argument that google is basically leveraging its monopoly to collect this data for free, repackage it, and resell it without paying a dime to original producers.

Of course, you could also make a very solid argument against this as well. As I said in the other article about french press, both sides have very compelling arguments to back their cause. To pretend that only the side you support has them and other doesn't is quite ignorant at this point.

Re:Let them watch television.

[Dishevel]

Here is what is really going to happen.
The people the News agencies are worried about are already coming through Google news.
They will continue to look at Google News and not even notice that the results of the stuff they are looking for do not have Brazilian newspapers in them.
They will just see links to places that have the content they are looking for and they will go there.

Most of the internet cows will not even notice that Brazilian News organizations are no longer relevant to the larger conversations going on without them.

Re:And leveraging a monopoly means use that

[Luckyo]

Agree on all points. Google gains large amounts of personal data on its users from news.google.com. That is its core business. It obviously doesn't want to lose it, but it also doesn't want to pay for it either.

In the end, this will be an interesting precedent regardless of outcome. Both parties will have very good arguments to bring to the table.