France Applies Tax Pressure To Google For Republishing News Snippets

Qedward writes "France may introduce a law to make Google pay to republish news snippets if it doesn't strike a deal with French news publishers before the end of the year, the office of French President François Hollande said. French publishers want to share in the revenue that Google earns from advertising displayed alongside their news snippets in search results. Readers are often satisfied by reading the headline and summary published by Google News, and don't feel the need to click through to the news site, the publishers say. In this way, Google profits and the content creators don't. The publishers want to be able to charge Google to compensate them for ad revenue losses."

Comments

Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

The French really want to be removed from the internet...

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is not the internet you moron

Happily used the internet before google existed and continue to use the internet without google

Re:Banned from Google?

[poetmatt]

Not quite. They want to get paid by force since they haven't tried to earn money via adapting to changes to technology.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Sulphur]

The French really want to be removed from the internet...

Its a vast Yahoo conspiracy.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tepples]

Google is not the internet you moron

If you make a piece of information available through the Internet, and you have opted out of allowing it to be indexed in the search engines that index resources available through the Internet, have you really made the piece of information available?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Erm, yes! What do you think URL's are!?

Just because I'm not in the Phone book doesn't mean people can't call me.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Joce640k]

I wonder if they've ever heard of "robots.txt"?

Last I heard, Google was honoring it....

Re:Banned from Google?

[kelemvor4]

... Erm, yes! What do you think URL's are!?

Just because I'm not in the Phone book doesn't mean people can't call me.

If your business revolved around people calling you it means your business would probably fail.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they've ever heard of "robots.txt"?

Last I heard, Google was honoring it....

But then they would get zero money and disappear from google search's results. What they want is being indexed by google *and* being payed for it (because google displays there content on google news).

robots.txt doesn't allow this.

Re:Banned from Google?

[kelemvor4]

I wonder if they've ever heard of "robots.txt"?

Last I heard, Google was honoring it....

That would work fine if they wanted to be removed from the index. They want to receive Google's indexing service free and they also want Google to pay them for the privilege of giving them free indexing services. I bet if Google dropped them from the indexes for a few weeks, they'd be begging to get back in.

Re:Banned from Google?

[91degrees]

Their content helps make Google rich. They're fine with that but want their cut.

Re:Banned from Google?

[similar_name]

Yes but it wouldn't be very bright for a business to have an unlisted number.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Search engines are not the internet. Google is not the only search engine.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly this.

We want the ipad, but we don't want to pay for it, so we'll just use force of law to make you give it to us for free.

It's like a dystopian nightmare come true.

Re:Banned from Google?

[nitehawk214]

Their content helps make Google rich. They're fine with that but want their cut.

Or you can spin it "Google provides a free service of directing traffic to their site."

Re:Banned from Google?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Three strike law applies to France => two more strikes remaining until Google stops indexing them.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Bujang Lapok]

Better yet, make it opt-in only for the French. Their sites don't get indexed, unless they agree to non-chargeable access for indexing. Perhaps this can be accomplished by extending Sitemaps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps)

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the only comment I have seen that gets to the heart of the matter.

Old method, can't do the new work, get to your lobbyists to get the government to force someone else to pay you for the work you can't do.

From a realistic point of view, staying in France makes no sense unless you can make a profit over the additional costs the Socialist Government is going to level. I am sure most of the world can live with out French new snippets and the ones who have to have them can pay for the i net delivered French newspapers.

Almost a non-story.

Re:Banned from Google?

[jalopezp]

The French newspapers know what they're doing. They don't want to be unlisted from Google, that would be a terrible idea. If you're not listed in the largest search engine, no one can find you and you're in trouble. But if they all threaten to unlist together, then it's Google who is in trouble in France. Google is in the business of linking people to content, and it can't do that without any content, so the newspapers (as long as they act together, and especially if the government backs them) have a foothold to bargain with Google. If Google wants to keep its share of the French market, it can't afford to lose the news agencies - little as it may care about losing just one.

That said though, I don't think Google will have to pay. Sense will prevail in the end.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well: Janitors, Pizza Delivery, Gardeners, Pest Control, Taxicabs... we all now they've failed at their business model.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they want the inter removed from the Frenchnet.

Re:Banned from Google?

[aleph]

But that's not the case. Google honours such requests.

They want to force Google to index them *and* pay them. (Comments from Eric Schmidt that Google might have to stop indexing the sites if such a law was passed, was decried as a "threat")

Re:Banned from Google?

[CCarrot]

Search engines are not the internet. Google is not the only search engine.

Indeed, but who says they won't try to strongarm the other major search providers the same way? It's the same logic chain : "hey, you're making money off of showing people some of our content, we want a piece!" Want to take wagers on how many search providers will agree to that? They're already providing these paranoid schmucks with a valuable service by indexing their content and making it available to inquiring netizens across the globe, why would they then agree to pay to provide this service?

The French content providers could simply request that Google and other search providers only show the headline with no summary info, that would seem to work. Trouble is, if you don't show the end user enough to confirm that your article has the info they're looking for, they'll just move on to the next item in the search results. I guess that's simply the consequences of greed.

These guys had better be confident in the fidelity and longevity of their already subscribed user base, otherwise they're shooting themselves in the foot with this move.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Google will remove them from google news while indexing them (weightedly of course) at 150,000,000 result for the topic on their page. Sounds simple.

Re:Banned from Google?

[silanea]

The danger in this is that a concerted Google boycott from established news outlets may well provide an incredible opportunity for businesses who actually "get" the Internet but were previously drowned out by big name publications to reach a huge audience with virtually no competition. Would they really risk that?

Re:Banned from Google?

[cayenne8]

Just throw your garbage any old place like I used to do.

Well, I suppose Google could just turn off google.fr or whatever it is....and see how they like that.

Or, I guess maybe they could just blacklist all the complaining news agencies and not index their sites at all and see how the French news agencies and leaders liked that...?

How about France try to invent the next Google or Google-like successful internet company, and then they can tax the living hell out of that all to their hearts delight, eh?

Re:Banned from Google?

[91degrees]

But, as they say, if someone is offering you a service for free, you're not the customer. You're the product.

The product provider wants to be paid for its product.

Getting the government involved is a bit of a dirty trick, but then, Google is a business as are the newspapers.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, Google did exactly what a news corp wanted then the corp got back crying to the courts saying Google was being vindictive.

Re:Banned from Google?

[cayenne8]

The danger in this is that a concerted Google boycott from established news outlets may well provide an incredible opportunity for businesses who actually "get" the Internet but were previously drowned out by big name publications to reach a huge audience with virtually no competition. Would they really risk that?

I dunno.

I don't personally see this jumpstarting a successful company whose sole benefit starting out is, that they index French news sites and pay the sites for the priv.

I suppose they could grow from there...and gain more clients to index by promising to pay them for the priv...but really, that doesn't sound like a terribly viable business case there, especially not when just starting out...?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

So many words just to agree with parent! That's right. Our visits are Google's product. Newspapers should pay Google for providing them with readers' eyeballs.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

All other news aggregators would have to abide by this law also. If you want to link to content and show a "snippet", you have to pay. Doesn't matter if you're Google.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they weren't in the phone book or in someway searchable then yes, they would fail pretty quick. How do you expect people to know how to contact them?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, stick your head in the sand while Google makes a landgrab for free republishing rights to all the IP in the world, if you like.

What is your solution to "adapt" to Google taking significant revenue away from their work, anyway? Clearly there's an easy way to handle this without recourse to law which is too trivially obvious for you to mention.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Kielistic]

Did I miss the headlines when all those services decided they refused to be listed unless they got a share of phone book profits? Last I noticed all of those services paid to be listed more prominently in phone books and anywhere else they can get their name and contact information displayed.

Re:Banned from Google?

[pixelpusher220]

You know what? They're all in the phone book...hence aren't what the poster was talking about, moron.

Re:Banned from Google?

[pixelpusher220]

Indeed. I really want Google to just say "You think you're being robbed of ad revenue? We'll show you real loss of ad revenue by not listing you at all. Let us know when you want back in."

Re:Banned from Google?

[pixelpusher220]

Uh, you don't have to use Google. If you're crying that you need to use Google....you really don't have much of an argument.

Re:Banned from Google?

[dyingtolive]

Fine, keep Google out: robots.txt

Oh wait, that kills their ad revenue moreso, doesn't it? What they really want is that they want to have their cake AND eat it too? No... that didn't work for the last Frenchy who insisted upon it. I doubt it will work here either.

Re:Banned from Google?

[AmiMoJo]

Google doesn't just index their sites though, they built their own portal and filled it with content from the newspaper's web sites. The papers are arguing that Google News is a destination in itself and often people get enough detail just from that site than to the snippets.

Web search is different because most of the time you don't go to Google just to look at the search results, you go to find sites and then visit them. Of course now Google actually presents a lot of data right on the search page so it is becoming more like Google News.

You also have to consider that although Google indexes them for free it isn't as if Google gets nothing in return. If you typed in "le monde" and didn't get the Le Monde site you probably wouldn't think Google was very good, and in future Google would lose your ad revenue.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Endovior]

That's pretty much the only logical response for Google, yeah. If some law says "you can't index this content without paying fees", Google (or any search engine) must respond by saying "fine, all content that costs a fee to index will not be indexed... and by the way, if you really didn't want us to index your content, you could've said so in robots.txt"

Re:Banned from Google?

[pixelpusher220]

The product provider wants to be paid for its product.

AND they want to get Google's service for free. Not exactly high moral ground. If you don't like Google's service, then by all means, opt out with robots.txt. But complaining that Google is 'mooching' your product while still demanding that Google give you a service YOU DON'T PAY FOR, is pretty ballsy.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet. Google needs to send them a bill for indexing and serving up their web pages. Don't want to pay for those services? Well then you had better run your own search engine. (And good luck with that.)

Re:Banned from Google?

[Endovior]

Good point, actually. You can't write a law that says 'Google', really; and you probably can't even apply it only to search engines. Accordingly, the law will be fairly broad and crippling... to people that have to abide by French law. Since those people are mostly French, and since people outside France will just not bother and drop French content, such a law would be damaging to France, and have minimal impact everywhere else.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaand here goes yet another moron who argues out of his ass without ever visiting Google News.

If you'd ever visit it, you'd see "the content" they've filled their "portal" consists of headline, one or two sentences and sometimes a tiny thumbnail. You must be living a pretty boring life if this goes as "content" for you. The only "enough" you get from there is "I've seen enough to know this doesn't look like what I'd like to read", not "I've seen enough not to need any further details"

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly my point - they don't need to use Google. And when all the content creators realize this, and strike deals with Bing and other content services, and Google can't make money by displaying other people's content, Google will stop making these threats, and start supporting the content creators it depends on for its livelihood.

Because you're right: you don't have to use Google. And the sooner content creators realize this, the sooner Google's ridiculous parasitic stranglehold of the internet will be broken.

Re:Banned from Google?

[TheRealGrogan]

The parent that you are trying to belittle is correct. Google will just de-list the news sites. Have they not already learned that lesson, that you can't have it both ways? Ask some Belgian news publishers. They are just not in a position to play "hard ball" with Google.

The reason the news sites don't like summaries is, it gives people a chance to decide if they are interested in reading the article before they click. It saves us from wasting our time. So... my heart just pumps purple piss for them.

Re:Banned from Google?

[pixelpusher220]

Yeah but that's not what the French are saying. They want to have their cake and get paid for having their cake.

Google does not have a stranglehold by any stretch. Are they the largest? Sure, but far from the only player in the space. I'm not aware of anything they do regarding ad clicks/views that is anti-competitive (but then I wouldn't claim to be terribly knowledgeable about the innards of such business processing)

The basic point is that Google is making money off of them, while also making them 'more' money in the process. That's a basic definition of win/win. And yet they don't want to accept it. It's mind bogglingly short sited.

Re:Banned from Google?

[icebraining]

Google does let you index block just the News bot without blocking Search; you just have to setup different rules for the "Googlebot" and the "Googlebot-News" useragent. (It's the same bot, but it complies with both rules if they're defined).

Re:Banned from Google?

[Kergan]

Did I miss the headlines when all those services decided they refused to be listed unless they got a share of phone book profits? Last I noticed all of those services paid to be listed more prominently in phone books and anywhere else they can get their name and contact information displayed.

You might have missed the headline that said businesses increasingly refused to pay the huge fees associated with being listed in the phone book in a meaningful manner. Or maybe you're simply not managing a business' marketing/sales budget, and have thus never ended up interacting with a phone book salesperson. Some are good. Really good, even.

Give this a thought, though: when was the last time you actually opened a phone book? Are you now seeing how that prominent listing isn't a good investment for them? Phone books are a dying business.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a pretty funny comment on Slashdot, where most of the users can't be arsed to read more than the headline and maybe the few-sentence summary before diving into discussion. I think it's clear that headline + a snippet is indeed enough to get most people going.

Re:Banned from Google?

[omnichad]

Google would have a very simple response then. Block french newspapers from being indexed and show news from the rest of Europe. Now there's not even traffic coming in from Google, and they're really losing out.

Not sure how happy everyone would be with English language news being all that's available, though.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'd like a complimentary blowjob with my steak.

Re:Banned from Google?

[icebraining]

You can configure robots.txt to block Google News and not Search, Google has two different user-agents just for that.

They're just rent seeking, that's all.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertisement is usually paid for, Google is being nice offering it for free.

Re:Banned from Google?

[cdrguru]

You understand that Google isn't just indexing but providing a means by which the content can be accessed without ever visiting the page that was indexed? There is little reason to visit the site unless you really want the "long form" and what the news web sites are finding is that more and more people simply don't need the "long form". They are perfectly happy with the snippet Google has generously provided.

The result of Google not listing them might be pretty bad, but having Google continuing to list them and have people bypass the site in favor of the snippet is probably worse.

Re:Banned from Google?

[lgw]

Eventually Google will discover that there are a million unemployed jouranlism majors who would be willing to put headlines in their own words for minimum wage. Seriously: the cost to Google to put a "mechanical turk buffer" between them and the newpapers copyrights just isn't that high.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news the french newspaper Le Monde is trying to get a law passed that would allow them to charge everyone why walks by a news stand and reads the headlines without stopping to buy a paper.

Re:Banned from Google?

[cdrguru]

You seem to think the only sources of French news are in France. How about CNN or BBC? I'm sure they cover events and happenings in France.

Unfortunately, in some respects, when it comes to the Internet there is no such thing as a monopoly or even a cartel. France can't block news about France no matter how hard they try.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see, you didn't ever visit Google News too.

I mean, yeah, right:

Review: 'Assassin's Creed III' a powerful sequelUSA TODAY - 49 minutes ago

A scene from 'Assassin's Creed III.' (Photo: Ubisoft). 12:40PM EDT October 30. 2012 - These poachers picked the wrong place to hunt.

Yup, got all I've needed from Google. Ok, let's pick another one:

Syrian air force on offensive after failed truceReuters - 1 hour ago

1 of 5. Smoke rises from what activists say was a missile fired by a Syrian Air Force fighter jet loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad at Erbeen, near Damascus October 29, 2012.

Got all I need! I know exactly where the strikes were - in Syria! No need to know about what city, what scale, what consequences, Google told me everything.

Or this one:

Celtics' Doc Rivers won't reveal starting power forwardUSA TODAY - 34 minutes ago

Comments. Boston Celtics coach Doc River has several candidates to open at power forward Tuesday against the Miami Heat. Jared Sullinger 10-30-12.

Who cares who are those candidates? Google told me everything - they've got canditates and there's several of them! No need to find out who are they at all.

Next one:

Hurricane Sandy: What's Climate Change got to do With It?ABC News - 17 minutes ago

This photo provided by 6abc Action News shows the Inlet section of Atlantic City, N.J., as Hurricane Sandy makes it approach, Monday Oct. 29, 2012.

See, they've posted the answer to the headline's question right there in the summary! Nope, not visiting that article, no need to.

TL;DR: you can't be arsed to visit the site you're bashing. Well, I can't blame you, facts kinda get in the way of a good bashing.

Re:Banned from Google?

[CCarrot]

You understand that Google isn't just indexing but providing a means by which the content can be accessed without ever visiting the page that was indexed? There is little reason to visit the site unless you really want the "long form" and what the news web sites are finding is that more and more people simply don't need the "long form". They are perfectly happy with the snippet Google has generously provided.

The result of Google not listing them might be pretty bad, but having Google continuing to list them and have people bypass the site in favor of the snippet is probably worse.

Um, I rather doubt that.

In scenario two, they get X percent clickthrough based on those tantalizing snippets, from readers who actually will spend more time on their site than the snippet-browsers will (longer attention span, more interest in the subject under discussion, etc.). In scenario one, they get...0% clickthrough, and nobody knows they ever wrote anything on the subject at all.

Their entire user base would be comprised of people who have already bookmarked their site and enjoy spending time there, or new users generated through word of mouth advertising. Oh, and I suppose they could place some AdSense ads with Google (ouch, the irony, it burns) to try to drum up some traffic...

Re:Banned from Google?

[Nerdfest]

... A threat? That's silly, if they wanted to threaten them, they say "French news sites are blocked, and if they want back in, they need to bay *us*".

Re:Banned from Google?

[91degrees]

That's very altruistic of Google. And to think, they're doing this without getting any benefit from it at all.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Grishnakh]

You're right: fewer businesses are bothering with phone books, and fewer consumers use them (mainly just elderly people). Why is that?

Because everyone uses Google to find stuff now.

If I want to find a local pizzeria, I get on Google Maps and type in "pizza" and find everything near me. Then I can look at the reviews for them too. Why would I need a phone book?

However, if the pizzerias all decided to force Google to not list them, I wouldn't find them, and they'd no longer get any new business.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Grishnakh]

You actually think Bing is going to pay these news sites to show summaries of their articles?

Re:Banned from Google?

[91degrees]

There's a value to Google to get the content from the newspapers.

There's a value to the newspapers to get advertising from Google.

Which is worth more?

Re:Banned from Google?

[UnknownSoldier]

> if the pizzerias all decided to force Google to not list them, I wouldn't find them, and they'd no longer get any new business.

The trouble is, that is an all-or-nothing. If anyone business did that they would be seriously harming their potential revenue.

IF the pizzerias could work together THEN then yes, they could get control and dictate prices.

The "trouble" is all it takes is just one business who *gasp* WANTS potential customers to find them.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Grishnakh]

If all the pizzerias in a town decided to do that, I think Google would happily delist them and let them founder. Maybe if all the restaurants in the NYC area did this, for instance, Google would sit up and take notice, but there's no way that's ever going to happen.

The fact is, Google is just like the phone books, except unlike the phone books, you don't have to pay an exorbitant fee to be listed there. Any business refusing this free advertising would be utterly stupid in doing so. It's doubtful there's enough money in the indexing business to make it worthwhile to pay off businesses to list them; if there were, someone would have made a business out of it ages ago. Instead, it's always businesses having to pay to advertise themselves. Google's only able to do it for free because they operate at such large volume and with such low costs that they can get money through targeted advertisement to pay for everything. Would pizzerias really want to make an issue out of it so they can get a check for $2/month?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I don't know, you tell us.

Me and GGP seem to be fine with considering it balanced and keeping status quo - "newspapers should pay" was tongue in cheek, if you missed it - but you and french newspapers seem to have pretty strong opinion that they're getting worse end of the deal (or that they should get better end of the deal).

Maybe either you or they have numbers to show this?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Joce640k]

The result of Google not listing them might be pretty bad, but having Google continuing to list them and have people bypass the site in favor of the snippet is probably worse.

They always have to option of making their site so compelling that people will bypass google when they want news and go directly to them.

Oh, wait, they want cake and cake.

This is almost as pathetic as when Telefonica here in Spain wanted Youtube to pay them for transporting all that data to the users - because Youtube was using their cables to do it. Such logic is irrefutable! Not.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could get le monde from a search w/o indexing any of the site.
But that is really MAD.

The odd thing is this Google News focus. I haven't see any ads on Google News. So their percentage of $0 in revenue would be $0?

It is the google search snippets they object to, apparently, which is fairly nutty too, w/o considering robots.txt

Re:Banned from Google?

[91degrees]

Yeah, I got that it was tongue in cheek, and I agree. there are two ways of looking at this. Slashdot seems to be biased towards Google though and I'm more interested in providing a counterpoint.

Tell you what - the newspapers split 50% of their ad revenue with the search engine that provides the content. The search engines provide 50% of the revenue that they get through listing the newspaper stories.

Honestly, this actually sounds fair to me. I suspect that the newspapers would leap at this and Google would resist it simply because both sides interest here is to maximise their own revenue. That's largely what a business is for, after all.

Re:Banned from Google?

[TheEyes]

The basic point is that Google is making money off of them, while also making them 'more' money in the process. That's a basic definition of win/win. And yet they don't want to accept it. It's mind bogglingly short sited.

It's pretty simple: they see a golden goose, one who lays them golden eggs, and they want to cut it open to get more gold out of it.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Google,

please do not negotiate with terrorists.
Just nuke them from the orbit ... err... search engine. They may stay on the Maps for some time. Then white splash with "Here you can spot Dragons"

Re:Banned from Google?

[Joce640k]

In reality, the french web sites' advertising revenues are plummeting because nobody's clicking through off Google's site.

You're saying they'd get more page views if Google didn't list them...?

I think not.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Joce640k]

+1 Insightful.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Seb C.]

No... Not the french, the french _content provider_.

I'm french, and if you ask me, i'd say this whole stuff is non sense, event more non sense since the government feels like it should threaten google with a silly law (but well, as a citizen from "civilized" country, i'm as much used to silly law as you must be).

So please, make me a favor and don't drop me in the same basket as those silly content providers (who, beside this, really need google to just live : google is a big audience source).

Re:Banned from Google?

[dadioflex]

And the real point is that these news sites don't want you to find the news even on their own sites, they want you to buy a newspaper.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google doesn't make any revenue directly from Google News. You can say things like News/Calendar draw people to Google and so they are more likely to use their search but they don't have ads on the actual News site. They make no measurable revenue from listing newspaper stories so splitting profits 50/50 would be even worse for the newspapers than it is now.

Re:Banned from Google?

[foniksonik]

The parent was talking about competing news sources who don't mind being highlighted on a top news portal. They would get way more traffic as a result allowing them to sell more ads and grow their business.

Re:Banned from Google?

[TheEyes]

Tell you what - the newspapers split 50% of their ad revenue with the search engine that provides the content. The search engines provide 50% of the revenue that they get through listing the newspaper stories.

Well let's think about that:

1) Google News has no ads. The search engine side has ads, but realistically how many people use Google Search to find a specific newspaper article?
2) Newspapers have a whole lot of ads surrounding, and in some cases layered into, their content.

The net result here is that the newspapers will be paying Google. I don't think that's what they had in mind with this little cartel shakedown scheme.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Les députés adoptent le projet de budget de la Sécurité sociale
Le Nouvel Observateur - Il y a 2 heures
L'Assemblée nationale a adopté mardi 30 octobre en premiÃre lecture, par 318 voix contre 228, le projet de budget de la Sécurité sociale pour 2013, qui prévoit notamment quelque 5 milliards d'euros de recettes supplémentaires pour réduire le déficit de la ..."

vs

France Applies Tax Pressure To Google For Republishing News Snippets 231

Qedward writes "France may introduce a law to make Google pay to republish news snippets if it doesn't strike a deal with French
news publishers before the end of the year, the office of French President Franc,ois Hollande said. French publishers want to share
in the revenue that Google earns from advertising displayed alongside their news snippets in search results. Readers are often
satisfied by reading the headline and summary published by Google News, and don't feel the need to click through to the news site,
the publishers say. In this way, Google profits and the content creators don't. The publishers want to be able to charge Google to
compensate them for ad revenue losses."

Gotta say, I'm a lot more inclined to click on the first one. Setting aside the lack of advertisements, as far as I can see, on news.google.fr

Re:Banned from Google?

[91degrees]

So, why does Google have a news section? What's in it for them?

Re:Banned from Google?

[jjo]

It's very simple: either Google listings are good for the newspapers, or they aren't. If the listings are not good for the newspapers, the newspapers can shut them off right now via robots.txt. If Google listings are good for the newspapers, then why are they demanding payment from Google and not vice versa?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

If push comes to shove then google should provide a mechanism of being able to provide a way for the news sites to choose what they want to show, even something simple as headline or headline plus snippet, headline plus snippet plus image. This way both parties will win, and the French news site dont have carry on about loosing revenue from showing the snippet since they have the control.

However, the chances of users entering the site will be reduced.... Or will it?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Compaqt]

OK, but they're talking about the revenue that Google gets from displaying ads next to Google News.

Yet, Google doesn't display ads in Google News.

So what are they even talking about?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Hentes]

Even better, charge French sites for getting indexed.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

So they would make more money if google didn't list them?

Re:Banned from Google?

[youngatheart]

The fact is, Google is just like the phone books... Google's only able to do it for free because they operate at such large volume and with such low costs ...

There is a bit of a difference and it is a significant one. Phone books don't have the content of today's news. I can go to Google and search for "Pizzeria news" and see headlines and brief news snippits. I can't do that with the phone book. If I want to get Pizzeria News using the phone book, I have to call my local newspaper company. Google cuts out the need to make that call for a lot of people.

Now there are some things that are fairly compared to phone books and some things that aren't but the news people have a complaint that isn't fairly addressed unless Google stops showing anything but a link to the news agency. (Which might be a fair and reasonable response actually.)

Still they news agencies absolutely could have set to not have Google spider and they choose not to because they don't want Google to stop. I think that sums up the real issue right there.

Re:Banned from Google?

[ewibble]

I don't understand why it seems to be a moral right make money from anybody who makes money from you.

If I sell food that gives people indigestion, should I get a cut from the people who make antacids? or vice versa. Should coke get a cut of the weight loss industries profits?

It is like seeing two children fight,
X was playing with my toy.
You haven't used it in months,
But its mine, its not fair.

Sure Google probably makes money of Google News but the newspapers benefit (they obviously believe this or they would de-list) so what if Google makes more or less money than you it is irrelevant, just get on with it.

If you think people don't click through to see the full article perhaps get your writers to write more seductive summaries.

Re:Banned from Google?

[bingoUV]

Whichever is worth more, both Google and newspapers can stop it from happening whenever they want. Even without new laws being passed, and taxation being used as a stick.

So whoever thinks they are are getting the shorter end of the stick can simply break the deal. Now that's as fair as anything can be.

Re:Banned from Google?

[TapeCutter]

I've been using Google news since day one, what I have noticed is many of the snippets are now one line adverts that have nothing to do with the story. My personal opinion is that Google should throw the complainers to the wolves by blacklisting them on their news site, that way the only disruption is to the organizations who are bitching about free advertising for their site (and their sponsors), the rest of the French population don't need to be affected by this madness. These bastards won't be satisfied with a payment, they don't just want a piece of Google pie, they want the whole thing and they want it on a silver platter to match their silver spoons.

OTOH, newspapers, in particular Murdoch papers, have been crying about this stuff to lawmakers for over a decade and so far nobody has offered them so much as a handkerchief. I hope the French government has the good sense to continue that tradition.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what the value is to Google of being able to display summaries of any particular country's news sources, but my bet is they make a respectable return. (Why else would they do it, after all?)

So what's so terrible about asking them to pay for it?

It's an interesting idea, and the outcome might even tell us a little about Google's closely-held accounting secrets.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot isn't any different. It's a news aggregator/portal which makes money off of ads while quoting from the stories it links to. Good lord, aggregator sites are everywhere (can you say HuffPost?) on the internet.

Re:Banned from Google?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

How about France try to invent the next Google or Google-like successful internet company, and then they can tax the living hell out of that all to their hearts delight, eh?

They tried that actually. Many in the French government are shockingly (or not?) anti-American, and an effort spearheaded by Chirac to "restore French pride" by creating a French (or at least, European) alternative to Google was started, and they called it Quaero. Many euros later (I think in the range of a hundred million from taxpayers,) never really went anywhere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/apr/26/news.france

"The French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné has mocked the project's funding as paltry in comparison with Microsoft or Google. Mike Lynch, chief executive of Autonomy, a Cambridge-based search software firm, wrote to the Financial Times calling the plan "a blatant case of misguided and unnecessary nationalism" and warning that by the time Quaero is developed the market will have moved on.

Mr Chirac said he wanted to raise the global profile of French industry and avoid a future in which France was known only as a "museum country"."

Re:Banned from Google?

[gmhowell]

So, why does Google have a news section? What's in it for them?

Loss leader driving traffic to general search pages.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Cheech Wizard]

Brand recognition among other things.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google appears to plan exactly that.

Re:Banned from Google?

[DavidRawling]

In this case, would it not be that Le Monde is going to start charging the newsagent (news stand) based on the number of people who read the headlines, then either buy something different or walk away?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Seeteufel]

Well, they had the same debate in Belgium and settled with the publishers. As simple as that: When in Rome do as the Romans do. When you want to make business in France etc comply with their laws or leave.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Seeteufel]

The same applies to English publishers delivering to a French audience. When you operate your services for France comply with their laws.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Seeteufel]

Google settled in Belgium, they will do the same in France and Germany and...

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

And by "settle" you mean "removed them completely at first, then, after publishers came crying, agreed that they'll appear in general search, but not in news".

Re:Banned from Google?

[chrismcb]

Slashdotters don't RTFA they barely RTFS... and you expect lay people to read more than a couple of lines?

Re:Banned from Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, can you people stop saying "the French" or "France"? It's some newspapers, not all of the country.

It's as bad a generalization than saying "Americans wants to be removed from the scientific community" because some groups denies evolution.

Re:Banned from Google?

[xelah]

If only news publishers had some means to widely distribute small pieces of information such as URLs. Then they wouldn't have to pay telephone companies to publish their websites in phone books, and life would be so much better.

Re:Banned from Google?

[silanea]

I meant it the other way around: Small and/or obscure online-focused news publishers which currently languish in the shadow of the big established players could suddenly find themselves on the front page of Google News - and other aggregators - if the big brands really were to refuse Google unpaid access to their content. They would practically be handed enormous market shares for free over night.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Yoda222]

If I understand what you think, you almost says that most part of google is not available on the internet. http://www.google.com/robots.txt

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

Did I miss the headlines when all those services decided they refused to be listed unless they got a share of phone book profits? Last I noticed all of those services paid to be listed more prominently in phone books and anywhere else they can get their name and contact information displayed.

That is a ludicrous analogy. You don't ring up for a taxi or pizza and then decide that just reading their details in the phone book will do instead of actually calling a cab or ordering a pizza..

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

Bullshit, I can find local pizzerias without using Google easily enough. My town's website has a listing for all restaurants, something like Trip Advisor gives me reviews if I want, etc.

I'm not knocking Google, but access to that sort of low level local information barely requires the internet at all.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

They're already providing these paranoid schmucks with a valuable service by indexing their content and making it available to inquiring netizens across the globe, why would they then agree to pay to provide this service?

Ooh, perhaps because Google are making money off advertising which isn't going to the content providers? You make it sound like Google are some big charity linking to all this wonderful information for the good of humanity. Well, they're not, they're just doing it to get advertising revenue, and they are being underhand by providing enough of the meat of articles without linking to the original website, that people don't go to those websites, and all the advertising revenue goes to Google.

Google wants other people's information to be free so they can make money off it. They're parasites.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

The reason the news sites don't like summaries is, it gives people a chance to decide if they are interested in reading the article before they click. It saves us from wasting our time. So... my heart just pumps purple piss for them.

So let Google set up their own fucking news site then.

I don't get the sympathy for Google here, I really don't. I know information wants to be free and so on, but it's not: and Google are the ones making money off it.

Re:Banned from Google?

[helix2301]

I agree I would think this would be helping them get hits on the site and helping there ranking. I think there just hurting themselves with this I would be thrilled if google news published my blog.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

Not quite. They want to get paid by force since they haven't tried to earn money via adapting to changes to technology.

Fuck off. They want to get paid by advertisers the same way Google is. The difference is that Google has to spend very little money to copy headlines from other websites, whereas the actual news sites have to pay journalists, editors and so on to ensure that the stuff they publish is as accurate, fair and honest as possible.

Google are essetially stealing some of their advertising money off them, but that's fine here on slashdot because (a) Google are American and not evil French socialists and (b) because copyright is simply a Bad Thing, Google should just be allowed to reproduce the French news sites' content verbatim anyway.

I, for one, do not look forward to the day news sites like the Guardian and BBC have been replaced by some bland Google News Blog.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

I can access French (or wherever) news sites quite easily by going there directly. I don't need fucking Google to help me.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

They want to receive Google's indexing service free and they also want Google to pay them for the privilege of giving them free indexing services.

I thought they wanted Google to pay them for the privelege of using more of their content than can be justified by "fair usage", to the extent that people can read the excerpt on Google News and not even have to visit the original news website? Either I am misunderstanding something obvious here, or maybe I just don't believe that Google has the right to copy anything it wants for free and then make money from it.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

And the real point is that these news sites don't want you to find the news even on their own sites, they want you to buy a newspaper.

You do know that newspapers make most of their money from advertising, not income from physical newspaper sales?

The only reason they care about circulation figures is that it lets them up their rate cards compared to the competition.

So if they think Google are eating into their avertising revenue, they potentially have a serious problem.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

It's very simple: either Google listings are good for the newspapers, or they aren't. If the listings are not good for the newspapers, the newspapers can shut them off right now via robots.txt. If Google listings are good for the newspapers, then why are they demanding payment from Google and not vice versa?

Because Google News is not the same as being listed on Google search?

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

people outside France will just not bother and drop French content

No they won't. You can't just ignore what countries like France, Germany, China, India, Brazil, Russia or the US are doing, however much you like or dislike them.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

Their content helps make Google rich. They're fine with that but want their cut.

Or you can spin it "Google provides a free service of directing traffic to their site."

Yes, you can spin it like that if you're a fucking drooling Google fantard.

Re:Banned from Google?

[tehcyder]

I don't understand why it seems to be a moral right make money from anybody who makes money from you.

If you are admitting that Google does indeed make money from Google News (which seems only logical, as I don't hold to the general slashdot fantasy that Google are some sort of super cool quais-charity) then it seems to be a matter of reasonable business practice that Google should pay something to the people who provide all the content of Google News.

The food industry and coke are selling their own product, they are not piggy-backing off anyone else's.

Re:Banned from Google?

[kelemvor4]

They want to receive Google's indexing service free and they also want Google to pay them for the privilege of giving them free indexing services.

I thought they wanted Google to pay them for the privelege of using more of their content than can be justified by "fair usage", to the extent that people can read the excerpt on Google News and not even have to visit the original news website? Either I am misunderstanding something obvious here, or maybe I just don't believe that Google has the right to copy anything it wants for free and then make money from it.

Have you actually used the service in question? I use it regularly, and just looked again to be sure. Google gives a link to the article, and either a one sentence description or PART of a sentence. It seems like reasonable fair use to me. Here's an example news search for "fair usage": https://www.google.com/search?q=fair+usage&tbm=nws

Re:Banned from Google?

[Endovior]

As a search engine or other aggregator, sure you can. The incentive to do so is revenue, the disincentive to do so is a fee. If you think it feasible that a French court could actually compel you to pay a fee, you drop the content. If you're pretty certain that you don't give a shit about the French legal system, you might consider 'pirating' the content, by linking without paying the fee... but major sites like Google won't be able to get away with that. They can, however, get away with not indexing non-free content, in the same way they can get away with not indexing robot-excluded content.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, but you listed two different non-google ways of finding restaurants (and reviews), and they're both on the internet. How exactly do you find restaurants without the internet again? I'm actually old enough to remember the pre-internet days, and there were four ways that I remember: 1) yellow pages (which no one uses any more except old people, and which is what Google replaces), 2) word-of-mouth, and 3) serendipity (happening to see a place when you drive by), and 4) advertising (which they're still actually using in my area to advertise crappy restaurants, using unsolicited/bulk mailings and door hangars).

So the way I see it, these days, the only access to this "low level local information" that doesn't require the internet is relying on advertising (and the good places don't bother with advertising), using the phone book (which is also advertising, and fewer and fewer businesses are bothering to advertise in), or asking other locals. Hardly a good way to find a good place to eat.

Re:Banned from Google?

[poetmatt]

So why is this even relevant then?

Nothing is stopping you from entering the french website name. But yes, how dare google show you the relevant search results when searching for french articles aka what you fucking asked for. Right?

Re:Banned from Google?

[TheRealGrogan]

The news sites want their content indexed and they don't get to dictate the terms of it. If the French try to bully Google, they'll simply decline to participate and those searching can land elsewhere. It's a big Internet, with content parrotted across the globe.

It's not really sympathy, it's just that I like good search results and aggregations, with summaries.

Summaries are fair use and if the French don't think so, they can go boil their arses in oil.

Re:Banned from Google?

[Fr1998]

I was thinking the same thing. I would point out though that IMO this goes deeper. Hollande would not support the press so much without an extra motivation: He is digging for taxes any way he can, and if Google pays the papers as he asks, he can tax _that_ income tu the max because the French press can not repatriate income like Google can. Therefore France taxes advertising income on the newspaper page views as well as the income on indexing the press is asking for.

Re:Banned from Google?

[TheRealLifeboy]

The whole phonebook analogy is really poor. It really has nothing to do with the matter. It's not what this is about.

This is actually like having maths solutions for students on your site and getting people to come there is what Google does: It provides a listing. If however the answer to a problem is already displayed in the snippet with the link, then Google takes the need to visit the site away.

Google earns add revenue from their advertisers. In a similar the listed site earns revenue from it revenue sources. If however Google elliminates much of the traffic to the listed site, only Google profits from the link/snippet and then the listed site is entitled to have a share of Google's revenue for that link.

Simple.

And the French are quite right about this.

If it's really just snippets

[WOOFYGOOFY]

If it's really just snippets of a larger value proposition that people are allegedly willing to pay for, then I think this is better known elsewhere in the world as "free advertising".

Sorry France. Love your healthcare system, but this is just silly.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[Anonymous Coward]

Does France have those newspaper vending machines that you can read half of the front page? Oh no! Maybe they should be charging everyone who reads the snippits on the front page of it without purchasing a newspaper!

Re:If it's really just snippets

[cayenne8]

Sorry France. Love your healthcare system, but this is just silly.

Hey...they gotta pay for that healthcare system somehow.

At some point, you run out of someone else's money. At the point...locally they're getting squeezed badly, so I'm guessing steps like this are a testing ground to grab more money for the country in general, to help pay for it.

ie: Testing for a new source of "someone else's" money...

Re:If it's really just snippets

[Daniel Dvorkin]

From the raging lefties over at Fox News, here's a comparison of US to French annual health spending:

US: 17.4% of GDP / ~$8000 per capita
France: 11.8% of GDP / ~$4000 per capita

You were saying?

Re:If it's really just snippets

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't call us fat, you intolerant!

Here, let me sue you.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[Anonymous Coward]

From the raging lefties over at Fox News, here's a comparison of US to French annual health spending:

US: 17.4% of GDP / ~$8000 per capita
France: 11.8% of GDP / ~$4000 per capita

You were saying?

Are you trying to insinuate the US doesn't have socialized health care? Because millions of people would argue otherwise: people on Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, the Veterans' Administration, or who obtain free care by going to emergency departments without ability to pay. That's off the top of my head, no doubt there are more government health care programs out there (even at the federal level). No doubt there's some statistical data out there showing how much of the population is on socialized health care here. Perhaps it will even be a majority once the Boomer generation all hits 65 and enrolls in Medicare.

So, yes, the system is running on "other people's money" as GP said—you're both correct. In standard US cognitive dissonance, apparently we long ago decided we wanted "some" socialized health care, so naturally Congress set up committees to determine the best way to make it cost the maximum amount possible.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[orgelspieler]

Are you trying to insinuate the US doesn't have socialized health care? Because millions of people would argue otherwise: people on Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, the Veterans' Administration, or who obtain free care by going to emergency departments without ability to pay.

First of all, I don't think GP was saying that at all.

Second, If Medicare is socialized health care, so is every other form of health insurance. Because right now I'm paying a nice chunk of my paycheck into Medicare every week. What's the difference between that and Aetna? We all pay every week. We don't all use it. Some of us use more than what we paid in. You may argue that since one is run by the government, that it's inherently more "socialized." I guess that depends on your distinction between socialized and socialist.

I have no way to elect the president of Aetna; if it's the only health care option offered by my company, I either take it or leave it (and pay outrageous fees for individual health insurance). I do have at least a nominal say in who runs Medicare.

Also, I don't know why you think people get free care at the ER. ERs are required to give care, but they are not required to do it for free. Even non-profit hospitals sue poor people.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[orgelspieler]

dammit. I totally forgot what this article was even about.... Nice trolling!

Re:If it's really just snippets

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, man, you need to calm the fuck down a bit.

The typical definition of "socialized medicine" in common discourse is equal to "government run health care, paid for by taxes". All of those I cited fit the bill. Aetna, obviously, does not.

I'm a libertarian who dislikes the idea of socialism—not that it matters to the point I'm making. Basically, I've become resigned to the fact that all these socialized/socialist health care programs in the US are here to stay. So, can we at least save some fucking money by just socializing it all into a single universal system? Right now we have the worst of both worlds: health care costs that are higher than the rest of the world's single payer socialist health care and poor/inconsistent coverage of the free market style approach.

Essentially, what I would prefer out of the shitty options available would be a UK-style NHS. Public health care that costs less than what we pay now available to everyone, alongside a private healthcare system that only takes paying customers.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I think the previous poster was referring to the fact that what we have is socialism for corporations.

The difference between France and other nations with lower cost, better outcome health care systems is they control costs also. In the US, hospitals are forced to charge to make up for the uninsured (which is why car insurance is mandatory, otherwise the system doesn't work) and insurance companies charge whatever they want , as do doctors. A little known fact is it was doctors who opposed prior attempts to socialize medicine- no one was going to tell them what they can charge .

As the actual story unraveled in history however, it was the insurance companies who got the upper hand on the doctors. That makes sense- doctors aren't singularly and only dedicated to finding ways to gain power and money by inserting themselves into a high-dollar system as a middle man with the power of the purse on one side and the ability to define benefits on the other, based on a guaranteed income stream with no upper bound.

In Japan doctors are solidly and assuredly middle class, but not rich, not making 500k or even 150k a year. That's because the government at every instance controls costs, Ditto elsewhere. Some Americans consider that unAmerican and against our self image. Unfortunately the realities and contingencies of a heath care system do not feel the need to comply with national myths . In the US, a lot of people go into medicine mainly for the prestige and to make a pile of moolah.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[Anonymous Coward]

And what I'm saying is that what we have is socialism for individuals (all those programs I cited are for individuals). A large percentage of the individuals in our population are already on socialist, government-run, publicly-financed health care.

The fact that the preponderance of working Americans get their health insurance through their employer is a moronic holdover from the early 20th century when socialists instituted confiscatory progressive income tax rates. The IRS turned a blind eye for a while during WWII and allowed health insurance benefits to be deductible. This kludge grew and eventually metastasized in the form of COBRA, HIPAA, and ultimately PPACA.

Most Americans would scoff if you proposed that they get their auto insurance through their employer. Furthermore, they would be bewildered if said auto insurance were priced to provide oil changes, new tires, new brakes, etc. However, the equivalents are considered sine qua non for health insurance.

This market is irretrievably distorted, and resetting the system to an individualist, free market solution would be politically untenable in modern America. So: bring on the "death panels"—it's not as if private insurers don't have them as well—health care rationing is a fact of life everywhere in the world.

What I'm saying is that we, as a society, have rejected the ramifications of allowing self-determinism in health care. We find it unacceptable to let someone die outside the doors of the ER merely because they lack ability to pay; therefore, there cannot be a truly free market. Since we won't allow people to choose a course of action that might end up with those circumstances then we must coerce them into avoiding it.

Frankly, doubling down on the present, unconstitutional & socialist health care programs to create a universal socialized government health care program is less offensive to my sensibilities than alleging that the founders wrote the US Constitution with the intention that the federal government could force *individuals* to purchase a product/service merely as a condition of being alive. What a farce; however, the outcome was inevitable: the decision was made and then a retcon rationalization was fabricated.

Like I said: here we are, with the worst of both worlds... and now a further-shredded Constitution as a bonus.

Re:If it's really just snippets

[tehcyder]

From the raging lefties over at Fox News, here's a comparison of US to French annual health spending:

US: 17.4% of GDP / ~$8000 per capita France: 11.8% of GDP / ~$4000 per capita

You were saying?

The main criticism of the US healthcare system has always been that is BOTH expensive AND unfair.

Here's a hint

[gman003]

If people can get all they want out of a headline and a paragraph, maybe you should focus on making the article have more *content* and less fluff.

Re:Here's a hint

[HexaByte]

Yes, indeed. Will these newspapers now put their publications behind darkened glass paper dispensers, so that no one will just look at the headline and decide no to buy it?

"We want free advertising of our product, but don't want you to make any money doing it for us!" Google should consider charging them for advertising they're giving them.

Re:Here's a hint

[Inda]

Those people would be me.

If the headline says "Jacko is dead" that's enough information for me to start a real conversation with colleagues, friends and the wife. Being a gobby know-it-all is not good when you want a proper discussion.

If it's a subject with a bit more meaning, I'll try the BBC first, Sky News second, ITN, C4 - all news providers I've already paid for. Maybe The Telegraph, The Sun, The Daily Fail, if the subject interests me. The chances are it's on Twitter, G+ and the ilk too.

Local news is the only news where it's worth reading all the text. RSS feeds cover those nicely. Funnily enough, the local sites often have adverts to local events, which I have more chance of using.

Big news - you are dead. Get over it.

Re:Here's a hint

[Baron_Yam]

"Google should consider charging them for advertising they're giving them"

I like this solution. Google should announce that they will be billing back any fees levied in France against the newspapers they index, plus a bit for administrative overhead. Any paper that doesn't like it can be banned from Google's index.

Re:Here's a hint

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if people can get all they want out of a headline and a paragraph they might as well give up, slashdot's got hte market cornered there...

Re:Here's a hint

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's all fluff, why would google want to index it and include it in search results anyway? Fluff certainly can't be relevant in a search.

Re:Here's a hint

[citizenr]

Those people would be me.

If the headline says "Jacko is dead" that's enough information for me to start a real conversation with colleagues, friends and the wife. Being a gobby know-it-all is not good when you want a proper discussion.

Haha this is so 2000. Nowadays headline reads "The star is dead", or "Great one died", or even "Guess who died" :). There are even courses on how to write headlines that force you to click. I started avoiding big portals after they introduced this weaksauce way of bumping clicks.

Re:Here's a hint

[Anonymous Coward]

They should also consider billing the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of foreign Affairs and that other waste of taxes 'Académie française' (the french language police)..

Re:Here's a hint

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the newspapers do not realise that these negotiations will end up so close to zero, that it will be impossible to predict on which side of zero it will be. Google won't fight this law, they will just make sure that this law will apply to _every_ French news company (including the papers) and then it will be a showdown of who can survive on the lowest margins. Guess who will win then.

Re:Here's a hint

[Anonymous Coward]

What you really get out of the headline is "nope, not worth reading", "nope, not interested", "nope, not that one either".

Of course they would rather you had to pay to read each article, before finding out that none of them are worth reading. Kinda like paper news. They don't have all the headlines on the front page either, only the few that they think lots of people would read.

Strike a deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Bwhahaha, great joke! But Google may go in the street for a strike if this law is voted :P

Re:Strike a deal

[hcs_$reboot]

The French government being in a dead end, having to find money wherever it is, and Google, making a lot of money, represents an ideal milk cow. In return, Google would be in a dead end if they accept the French tax: the rest of the world will want their share of the cake.

The French will come back

[SternisheFan]

I use GoogleNews, and it's a great way to learn about the world. Newspapers from different countries have made the same complaint as French papers are doing now. A few weeks/months later, after they see their website 'hits' go way down, they ask to be part of GopgleNews again. I expect the same is going to happen here.

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't underestimate the French, they have a record of mixing up stubborness and arrogancy.

Re:The French will come back

[MightyMartian]

If Google stops indexing all French news sources, it strikes me that any attempt to go after it after that must certainly be a violation of international trade laws.

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how important international readership is for online French newspapers?
Surely their main revenue audience is the French public to whom the French newspapers can sell advertising to.
I also can't see how French advertising would be of interest to a international audience,
I can see however how a French newspaper would be not happy with an American company diluting it from it's own local revenue collection.

I think that is more the issue here, not the fact that French newspapers would lose worldwide hits.
If they would lose global internet traffic I don't think they would really care.
It is the loss of French readers that hurts them most.

Re:The French will come back

[MightyMartian]

There are still sizable Francophone populations in the Americas, Africa, East Asia and Oceania.

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but if a French telecom company uses French newspapers to advertise a French telecom service, then having a francophone audience in some forgotten South Pacific island is not going to sell a telephone service in France to a French national residing in France.

If Google takes away a French reader who sees an advertisement for a French telecom on a Google generated page, then the advertising money is going into an Americans pocket and not a French one. What takes the icing off the cake for the French newspapers is that Google is attracting that French advertising audience with the very same content that the French newspapers have paid for to get said audience. I understand why they would like to get their investment back, and so they are asking their government for support.

I don't think it is about losing international readership, it is about losing local advertising revenue by Google profiting from content they did not create.
Now if Google would like to subsidize the creation of French news content I think it would be a different story.

Re:The French will come back

[MightyMartian]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I don't think Google's news aggregation service has anything to do with failing readership. I think the claim that people are just reading headlines in Google News and getting everything they need is unevidenced post hoc explanation for falling readership. The problem was beginning to rear its head long before Google reached the position it's at it. I suspect it has more to do with a lack of interest in content, and I would wager that if Google were to simply cut off all domestic French media outlets from its aggregator that their hits would in fact fall even lower. And I think we are about to find that out, because I can't imagine Google is going to give in to this particularly bit of extortion, and will simply cut French outlets out.

At some point newspapers and other media outlets are going to have to face facts. What they produce, no matter how much it may cost them, appears to be worth significantly less in the Internet Age.

Re:The French will come back

[ThatsNotPudding]

I just wish Google News allowed end users to filter out sources that are more propaganda than anything (Drudge, Newsmax, Fox...)

Re:The French will come back

[James Carnley]

I just wish Google News allowed end users to filter out sources that are more propaganda than anything (Drudge, Newsmax, Fox...)

You can personalize your sources in Google News right now.

First, open the configuration menu (the gear icon) then look towards the bottom of the pane. You will see an adjust sources section. Throw in Drudge and set it to Never.

Now you can read your own personalized information bubble.

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't underestimate the French, they have a record of being the most powerful and populous country in Western Europe for most of the last 2,000 years

FTFY. Enough with the France-bashing.

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't underestimate the French, they have a record of being the most powerful and populous country in Western Europe for most of the last 2,000 years

FTFY. Enough with the France-bashing.

Posting from Amsterdam, I see...

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

Why has this been modded "Funny"? Should be "Insightful"
Working in a bar in the Netherlands and these frenchies ARE the most arrogant pieces of intestinal waste I've ever met

Re:The French will come back

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't underestimate the French, they have a record of mixing up stubborness and arrogancy.

But the US has a long history of mass killing of civilian targets, so France'd better be careful if they annoy Google too much. Although at least they've got a nuclear deterrent themselves if things go too far...

Re:The French will come back

[tehcyder]

At some point newspapers and other media outlets are going to have to face facts. What they produce, no matter how much it may cost them, appears to be worth significantly less in the Internet Age.

I look forward to the massive increase in objectivity, accuracy and professionalism that will follow when the only internet news you can get comes from government or teenage bloggers.

Google....

[Anonymous Coward]

Should just drop their sites from their search results,

Re:Google....

[lintuxos]

I agree with this. Right now, some people do click the link to go to the news site, so these sites are generating some revenue from Google links with their own advertising. If Google removes the links, then the news sites lose.

Re:Google....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but they're French so they don't matter anyway.

Re:Google....

[Anonymous Coward]

From other recent news events (from France, not read about on Google News) it would seem prudent for Google to eliminate anything and all things France from its search results. Let those crazy people go.

Re:Google....

[The1stImmortal]

Also From other recent news events (From the US, like the content lobby (**AA), patent industry and absurd anticompetitiveness accusations) Google should probably eliminate anything and all things American [US] from its search results. Let those crazy people go.

Re:Google....

[Ash-Fox]

Alternatively, Google could just eat the costs and not show advertising on pages that have their links.

Re:Google....

[Anonymous Coward]

the thing is: droppingt the French newspapers from the News section of google.fr means more or less that you close this news section. Google doesn't want to pay but it doesn't want to close either.

Minitel

[alexander_686]

That's o.k. - They still have Minitel.

Re:Minitel

[jmauro]

Nope. It shut down on 30 June 2012

Re:Minitel

[Grishnakh]

Maybe now they'll move to reopen Minitel, since the rest of the world isn't going along with their weird version of reality.

Re:Minitel

[manu0601]

Maybe now they'll move to reopen Minitel, since the rest of the world isn't going along with their weird version of reality.

Please do not make french people accountable for all the mess their politicians do. Unfortunately we have very little way of kicking them out: just one opportunity every 5 years, and we just used the last one to get rid of Sarkozy.

Re:Minitel

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, but the French people are absolutely accountable for their politicians, just as we dumb Americans are accountable for our idiotic politicians like Todd "legitimate rape" Akins. The people are the ones who vote for the politicians and allow them to remain in power, so they're to blame if anything goes wrong. If you guys don't like your government, why don't you dust off the guillotines and put them to use again, like the last time you got tired of your leaders?

Re:Minitel

[manu0601]

If you guys don't like your government, why don't you dust off the guillotines and put them to use again

This would be delicious, but I think it would be better to take the power without violence. The problem with violence is that once it is used, anyone is legitimate to use it : Remember what happened in Paris in 1871. Unfortunately we must wait the next election in 5 years to kick them out.

But what about Mutual Benefits

[happy_place]

I wouldn't know the majority of news sites if it weren't for Google's aggregation. So I wouldn't click their sites at all. This seems like they're wanting compensation for something that already compensates them by listing them and making their site more visible.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't know the majority of news sites if it weren't for Google's aggregation. So I wouldn't click their sites at all. This seems like they're wanting compensation for something that already compensates them by listing them and making their site more visible.

Actually the payment should flow both ways. If the French (and Belgian, and German) Publishers want to free-ride google and charge google for the pleasure, then I don't really see why google shouldn't charge them for the privilege. Could get to be quite fun.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[tepples]

I think some of these news sites would prefer that readers come in through their front page rather than through a news article.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[Attila Dimedici]

Except of course that most people who read the article have never even heard of the paper before seeing it listed on Google.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[tepples]

most people who read the article have never even heard of the paper

Readers have heard of their own city's local paper. Perhaps the big papers are trying to get readers to ask their local paper to syndicate national stories from one of the big papers, just as a lot of U.S. papers syndicate national stories from Associated Press or Reuters. It's the same reason that cable TV channels run ads to "call your cable operator" about adding the company's new sister channel.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, that is true. For example, I have heard of my local papers. I never go to their websites unless one of their articles goes up on one of the news aggregators I regularly visit because they so rarely publish anything I am interested in reading.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[PIBM]

I've noticed a lot of news sites that redirects traffic based on the referer and you end up on the front page if you followed a link from google news. Thing is, I actually dislike that and generally close the site, which is the opposite of what usually happen when I go to read an article and end up crawling their site.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[dhomstad]

I guess I'm in a different category from you two. My habit is, go to Google News, check out my two favorite custom categories (atheism and yoga), click on links from stories that interest me. I always find myself on some smaller news site that I've never heard of before. The question isn't whether or not you're familiar with your local news sources. The question is whether people clicking through Google News (which is probably a majority of the site's traffic for a local news source that generates a headline on Google News) would be familiar with the site. I'm agreeing with Atilla Dimedici on this one. _______ However, I'de like to put out another "controversy" regarding site traffic and google advertising. I search "mr. clean" on google. The "first result" is www.mrclean.com, which is correct - that's what I was looking for. If I click on that link, I'll be directed to the the site I want to go to. However, if I click on the very top url, which is an "ad related to mr. clean," I'll be directed to the same site, albeit at the expense of whoever paid for the advertisement related to the search for "mr. clean." Both of these situations end with the user in the correct location. However, one is at the expense of the advertiser.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[tehcyder]

I wouldn't know the majority of news sites if it weren't for Google's aggregation.

Why would you boast on an internet forum about your laziness and ignorance?

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[tehcyder]

Except of course that most people who read the article have never even heard of the paper before seeing it listed on Google.

Then they are fairly stupid people. Something doesn't have to show up on Google to be real.

Re:But what about Mutual Benefits

[Attila Dimedici]

Why would the fact that someone living in Quebec is unfamiliar with a paper published in a town in France be an indication that they were stupid?

Don't see the argument really

[krelvin]

If a site doesn't want Google to make money off of their content headlines... then they can easily opt out of having Google pick up their data and index it.

But NO... they WANT the exposure and get a cut too.... if the law is passed, cut them off. Simple

Re:Don't see the argument really

[houghi]

So they want to change the opt-out to an opt-in. I see no problems with that. In fact I would greatly agree with it.

It is a pity that this was not the case from the start.

Re:Don't see the argument really

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be pretty stupid.

The internet was and is opt-in: one opts in by putting up a public website and opening web server port to the internet. Afterwards, everyone - including you, search bots, mash up services etc. - can read it and do everything the copyright laws allow them to.

Internet is meant to be crosslinked and accesible by default. If you wish to make your site only for your limited circle - you're welcome to use access restrictions. But most sites are meant to be read and linked to.

Re:Don't see the argument really

[Anonymous Coward]

So they want to change the opt-out to an opt-in.

Not at all. They want Google to keep indexing their news. They would be very upset if Google dropped them.
But they want to get paid for it too.

Re:Don't see the argument really

[SnowHog]

I would LOVE to wake up one morning and read that France has been cut off from Google. Maybe it's time for them to make another announcement about how they're going to revolutionize internet search engines with a government sponsored program like Quaero. Remember Quaero? Neither do I.

Re:Don't see the argument really

[icebraining]

They opted-in when they configured their servers to provide content to Googlebot.

Re:Don't see the argument really

[tehcyder]

This would be pretty stupid.

The internet was and is opt-in: one opts in by putting up a public website and opening web server port to the internet. Afterwards, everyone - including you, search bots, mash up services etc. - can read it and do everything the copyright laws allow them to.

Internet is meant to be crosslinked and accesible by default. If you wish to make your site only for your limited circle - you're welcome to use access restrictions. But most sites are meant to be read and linked to.

That was fine until money got involved in the internet.

For-profit organisations don't necessarily care about freedom, whether of information or anything else.

And google should charge

[Anonymous Coward]

French newspapers for every article readers click through to....

this isnt limited to only google

[bs0d3]

imagine if slashdot was sent a bill everytime a french link was referenced

Re:this isnt limited to only google

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Slashdot should send France a bill for all users from France accessing Slashdot. Google could paywall France as well. Google and Slashdot could use the money to pay the French newspapers' bills.

The folks in France could use their powers of democracy to prevent this from escalating, but I doubt that they will. This is just a classic Mafia-style shakedown. Google has money, and French newspapers want a "taste" or a "piece of the action."

Google will not let France get away with this, though. Otherwise, Google will end up paying tribute to every postage stamp country in the world.

Re:this isnt limited to only google

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it highly amusing that Google - a parasitic consumer of the content produced by the news sites - is being portrayed as a victim of a "mafia-style" shakedown, when Google is the one saying, "oh you don't want to be indexed? Okay, we'll direct all that traffic to your competitors. Nice news site you've got there - shame if something were to happen with it."

This is, at best, a mafia-style organization shaking down another mafia-style organization, and they deserve each other.

Re:this isnt limited to only google

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is the one saying, "oh you don't want to be indexed? Okay, we'll direct all that traffic to your competitors.

Zee Fail, eet eez zo ztwong!

.

Then take your ball and go home. Nobody cares.

[AbominousSalad]

Goodbye, France. Goodbye, Brazil. Congratulations on your decision to cease to exist.

Re:Then take your ball and go home. Nobody cares.

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll still exist. Admittedly google is all seeing and all powerful, but they are not the internet.

I imagine the papers will come back in the same way News International did.

The flip side is though, that if the news papers cease to exist then google can't place ads next to the scraped content so they'll loose money too

Re:Then take your ball and go home. Nobody cares.

[Spottywot]

They'll still exist. Admittedly google is all seeing and all powerful, but they are not the internet.

I imagine the papers will come back in the same way News International did.

The flip side is though, that if the news papers cease to exist then google can't place ads next to the scraped content so they'll loose money too

Clearly Google isn't the internet, but I really don't think this will be any skin off their nose. Even if three or four countries followed France on this one, the 'missing results' would be replaced by others moving up the search rankings, and joe public would click on them just the same, netting Google the same revenue as before.

The only way this would affect Google is if they were usurped by a search giant who did accept these proposed terms.

Avoiding the real question

[concealment]

Readers are often satisfied by reading the headline and summary published by Google News, and don't feel the need to click through to the news site, the publishers say.

I'm certainly from this group.

However this view avoids the real question: How is online content going to be paid for?

Newspapers already cannot make enough money off of online advertising to pay for the creation of their content.

I don't see internet users lining up for (a) micropayments or (b) some kind of universal subscription, and they're definitely not thinking about (c) maintain subscriptions to each of the 50 newspapers and magazines who post articles they want to read.

Seriously, why can't I get a Slashdot or Google subscription for $50 a year to read all these articles without ads and with the ability to retrieve them infinitely?

Your average newspaper's website would have to improve in navigability and reliability too.

There's a lot more to this question than one lawsuit can answer.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[0123456]

Maybe if the average newspaper contained 'content' which wasn't freely available on the web or had more intellectual content than 'Temporary Star X has bought a new dress', people might be willing to pay for them.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[rolfwind]

Seriously, why can't I get a Slashdot or Google subscription for $50 a year to read all these articles without ads and with the ability to retrieve them infinitely?

Yeah, great, a google wall to extract $50 a year from me. Soon, no other search engine but google will be allowed to index via their robots.txt.

And if you don't think that's possible, Google made their formerly free froogle/Google Shopping indexing service utterly worthless (to me) by making merchants to pay to be included in the first place.

I like many of the things google does, but they are gaining too much power, and to being to pay them a yearly subscription is not something I'm clamoring for.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Fred Ferrigno]

It's not as if we have a shortage of online content. The supply has actually increased tremendously and thus the effective market price of any individual piece has gone down. That sucks for the content producers, because their business is less profitable than it used to be, but no one said they were entitled to a certain level of profit. If they want to make more money, it's up to them to figure out how, preferably by innovating and contributing something new to society rather than rent-seeking.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Kergan]

Maybe if the average newspaper contained any content, people might be willing to pay for them.

FTFY

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Fastolfe]

Newspapers already cannot make enough money off of online advertising to pay for the creation of their content.

We're in the middle of a revolution in the news industry. Local news outlets could produce stories both of local scope and global scope, and people would happily pay to consume that content. Gradually global news organizations took over much of the content for the global stories, and local news outlets would just outsource the production of that content to those organizations. People still happily consumed the content from their local source, so little changed. With the introduction of the Internet, these news organizations are largely in direct competition with each other for the first time, and discovering that they can't just republish identical stories. Their readership is crashing as consumers move to global news sites, which usually offer a superior user experience.

This is "working as intended" as far as the market goes. Newspapers are doing what every business does when their industry is revolutionized: they either adapt, or turn to FUD and lobbying to hang on as long as they possibly can, so that they can squeeze out the last penny until they fold, and a lot of them will fold.

Seriously, why can't I get a Slashdot or Google subscription for $50 a year to read all these articles without ads and with the ability to retrieve them infinitely?

Great idea. But it doesn't really solve the problem: there are still too many news outlets producing essentially the same product, and there's still a lot more consumers that have yet to move to the Internet. The decline of Old Media is still in progress and we won't see these types of challenges stop until these companies have stopped functioning in fight-or-flight mode by failing or adapting.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[chihowa]

Seriously, why can't I get a Slashdot or Google subscription for $50 a year to read all these articles without ads and with the ability to retrieve them infinitely?

You know, Slashdot allows you to do exactly that. That option has been available here since 2002, though it's closer to $20/year.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[cdrguru]

The content that you are finding freely available is there because someone, somehow is getting paid. What newspapers are doing today is putting it out there and hoping to get paid which isn't working out so well for them. That will clearly lead to the content not being there very long.

When the newspapers go away likely as not AP (you know Associated Press, with heavy emphasis on the word Press) and Reuters will both go away or severely cut back - because they aren't going to be getting paid either. So today you have 100 sources for the same thing because 100 newspapers and TV stations are simply slapping some ads on a page with AP or Reuters content on it - content they are paying for. What happens when 99 of those go away because the ads aren't paying the bills?

So far, the only real winner in Internet advertising is Google.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[RocketRabbit]

"Newspapers already cannot make enough money off of online advertising to pay for the creation of their content."

Of course they make plenty of money. Their "content" is largely taken from the wire, retyped by a fresh journalism grad working for $9 an hour, and then spit back out the other end.

Many of these papers are owned by gigantic media conglomerates, which are doing better than ever despite the shitty economy.

The thing is, newspapers make money by showing people ads. Lots and lots of ads. Probably over 75% of any newspaper's printed materials these days are ads, paid product placements, paid reviews, etc. They also cram every kind of ad they can manage onto their web sites, which are generally a horrific mess.

The problem is that most major newspapers are still trying to be everything for everybody. The smaller, locally-focused ones are doing fine and also create interest that the NYT and USA Today type rags can not.

Anyway with the media just basically being a propaganda arm at this point, even if they were going under (they aren't) I don't think we would suffer.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

The Times introduced a paywall a couple years ago. According to Wikipedia they now have about one hundred thousand digital subscribers and paper sales have gone down, too.

Porn websites seem to be doing what you suggest. You pay for one and get access to a bunch (I'm told).

The awful truth is that, regardless of how online content is going to be paid for, is is more than clear that it is not going to be by restricting access to it. What you gain in revenue, you lose in relevance, and losing relevance means death to a newspaper.

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

How is online content going to be paid for?

What about selling products that people will want to buy?

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

Readers are often satisfied by reading the headline and summary published by Google News, and don't feel the need to click through to the news site, the publishers say.

I'm certainly from this group.

Really, a headline and one sentence and you're good? That may give you enough info to decide if the article is relevant to you or not, but you certainly didn't get any significant content of the article.

   

Re:Avoiding the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Newspaper in France benefit from huge amount of public money already. We are talking about 1.2 bilions euros (1.56 billions $) here.

But the quality is that low that nobody is interested in it. Alternative news sources like mediapart ( http://www.mediapart.fr/ ), @rrêt sur image ( http://www.arretsurimages.net/ ) or le canard enchainé do not benefit from public help and still can publish without loosing money. People are willing to pay for high quality informations (I do pay for @rrêt sur image).

Meanwhile, in the mainstream, heavily sponsorized using public money press : https://twitter.com/fabricearfi/status/263590297328574465/photo/1/large
Doing the same shit that nobody buys again and again, expecting it to be profitable somehow one day has a name : being stupid.

robots.txt

[kenorland]

Maybe newspapers who don't want to get republished by Google should learn about "robots.txt"? Granted, it's more than a decade old, but it still works.

Re:robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

i use to work to work for a french newspapers website : they spend a lot of money to have a high rank on google ... this whole story is just madness.

Re:robots.txt

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The newspapers WANT to be republished . . . AND they want to be paid for it. It's like wanting to be a member of a club, and insisting that the club pay you to be a member.

The whole thing is just about money. Google has it. The French newspapers don't. So the French government is looking for a way to channel money from Google to their newspapers.

I have an idea that would increase the readership of French newspapers . . . they could publish in English.

Re:robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

newspapers who don't want to get republished by Google

No such thing. They want their news indexed, and they want to get paid for it.

Re:robots.txt

[Uberbah]

Google is a megacorp of the kind that people protest all the time.

No. They're not.

Is Google getting billions in taxpayer subsidies like oil companies? No. Is Google getting billions in taxpayer bailouts after blowing their assets on get rich schemes? No. Is Google a monopoly ripping off their customers? No.

Do you have an actual point here? No.

Re:robots.txt

[jjo]

Just because Google has been staggeringly popilar, and therefore has a lot of money, does not mean that French newspapers are entitled to some of that money. Google is offering two choices: let Google index your site for free, or tell Google to leave you alone. Google is OK with either option. Why, pray tell, is Google obliged to index a site and pay for the privilege?

Re:robots.txt

[TheP4st]

It's like wanting to be a member of a club, and insisting that the club pay you to be a member.

Aha! That's how they got the idea, they found inspiration in the pro-athlete world.

Re:robots.txt

[kenorland]

The newspapers WANT to be republished . . . AND they want to be paid for it.

But this law won't accomplish that either. If this becomes law, Google will simply not republish any newspaper that doesn't agree on its own accord to allow Google to do so without charge.

Re:robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying virtually no taxes while benefiting from infrastructure, health, eduction, and social security schemes IS getting billions in taxpayer subsidies. It is a net transfer of wealth from non-Google citizens to Google. They had an effective tax rate of 2.4% in 2010; kind of makes a difference on your margins when you have to pay 35%.

It may not be illegal thanks to megacorps lobbying, but it certainly is a very advantageous and unfair set of opportunities only megacorps can afford.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html

Re:robots.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is a megacorp of the kind that people protest all the time.

If by Google you mean Youtube, and by people you mean fundamentalist muslims, then place a chip on your "Hasty Generalization" square on your "Logical Fallacy Bingo" sheet.

ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

If google is guilty of copyright infringement, then so are newsagents showing copies of the paper in their storefronts.

Re:ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot /.

This summary, just like many others, is directly copy-pasted from TFA - so pay up, Dice!

LOL

[JustAnotherIdiot]

I wonder if France realizes if they do this, Google will just pull french news sources from their site.
It's a Lose/Lose situation, Google has less news, these french sites get significantly less traffic.
Sure they might be complaining they don't get much, but i can guaran-fucking-tee you they'll get less without Google.

Re:LOL

[Talderas]

France realizes it. Google flat out told them if the law passes they will delist the French news organizations.

France's response? "You don't threaten a democratically elected government."

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

The government missed the right word: it's not a threat. It's a promise.
Google was nice enough to warn them and I hope will stick to its promise.

F: "We considers doing B."
G: "If B occurs, then A will be the consequence."
F: "You don't threaten..." ...
F does B.
G does A : "Told you so."

Re:LOL

[Massacrifice]

"You don't threaten a democratically elected government."

Quite right. They are threatening the french newspaper corporations, not the government. Maybe some of these companies are state-owned. Tough shit.

Re:LOL

[horza]

Indeed, there are more details here about it. Apparently Google passes on 4 billion click-throughs per month... methinks traffic would drop for those papers quite significantly if they got de-indexed. Under the new law, if any of those click-throughs fail to compensate the owner then there is up to €300,000 fine for each.

Phillip.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

France realizes it. Google flat out told them if the law passes they will delist the French news organizations.

Anyone in the German government reading this? Opportunity is knocking. You can be running France again before anyone in the outside world knows about it.

Re:LOL

[mumblestheclown]

Meanwhile, Bing or somebody steps in and offers the publishers a more fair deal compared to google's mafia-don offer you can't refuse because i never made you an offer I just took your stuff policies. The google model is broken. Fixing the internet starts with this and I applaud the french for standing up to it.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

The google model is broken. Fixing the internet starts with this and I applaud the french for standing up to it.

By the "google model" do you mean "the internet model"? The internet isn't broken. The internet is just a large computer network and in that regard it works about as well as can be expected.

If you want anyone at all to see your webpage:
make it public. anyone can see it whenever and you don't make a dime just from someone viewing the content.
make people pay to see your site. the actual authentication is variable but the general idea is no one sees the content unless they have already paid for it.

there is no mythical third model of: anyone can see it, but if they didn't directly type in the URL you somehow are entitle to money.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

That will certainly be Google's initial position, but whether they will go through with it is another matter. The two parties are basically playing chicken now. My bet is, Google will be the ones to swerve.

There's a reason Google runs a news aggregation service, and it's not because they think it looks pretty. They make money out of it. What exactly is wrong with asking them to share some of that money with the originators of the content they're using?

If Google refuses, it won't be out of some sort of principled stand that "information should be free". On the contrary, it will be because giving in would mean giving away some of their own highly secretive information about exactly how much profit they make from each part of their business.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

If a press that dumb can be removed from google index, it can be really beneficial for information in general.

However, as this is a law project, this will apply to all newspapers. And believe, quite a lot of them do appreciate to be referenced by Google. This is probably the scarier point of this madness.

Re:LOL

[Ash-Fox]

I wonder if France realizes if they do this, Google will just pull french news sources from their site.

How do you know if they won't just eat the costs and just not display adverts on search results that have those links?

"content creators"???

[mark-t]

Legitimate news reports don't "create" anything. You can't "create" facts... you can only observe them and record them. You can't really own a fact either.

Or are they suggesting that french news reporters somehow also manufacture the facts?

Re:"content creators"???

[Massacrifice]

What is being monetized when publishing news is reputation. Anybody can report "facts" but will you trust them?

Re:"content creators"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Legitimate news reports don't "create" anything. You can't "create" facts... you can only observe them and record them. You can't really own a fact either.

Or are they suggesting that french news reporters somehow also manufacture the facts?

Well, we know it works for Murdoch.

Re:"content creators"???

[mumblestheclown]

"Legitimate news reports don't "create" anything. You can't "create" facts..."

What utter rubbish. Overlooking the obvious and pathetic joke that you hinted at, news is created by the picking and choosing of select information in a sea of noise. By your estimation, michaelangelo didn't paint the sistene chapel since you can't create matter and paint is matter and programmers don't create programs since they didn't create the electrons.

Re:"content creators"???

[mcgrew]

Legitimate news reports don't "create" anything. You can't "create" facts

You also can't copyright facts, only the way they are presented. The presentation of the facts is the content, not the facts themselves.

The usual black and white responses

[Anonymous Coward]

And so the usual flood of obtuse comments along the lines of "If the newspapers don't want Google using their content, ban them in robots.txt", as if the only two options are Google gets to use their stories for free, or Google is blocked from using them. Utterly failing to grasp there is a middle-way, which is "Google share some of the profit they make from the newspapers content and everyone wins".

Re:The usual black and white responses

[0123456]

Sounds good. And the newspapers can share some of the profit they make from Google pointing people toward their stories, then everyone wins.

Re:The usual black and white responses

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that, google should get a per access and per registration bonus from these sites. And google would divide Ad revenue between all sites that are on the results list and give the french their part. Of course I think most french newspapers don't want to share their profits because they're utterly crap and don't make much.

Re:The usual black and white responses

[aleph]

Of course that would require a newspaper to make a profit... I don't think squeezing tech companies is a long term viable business strategy though.

Re:The usual black and white responses

[moeinvt]

If French publishers are going to get a cut, everyone else will start demanding a piece too. How do you divide up the revenue from the ads shown on the google news site?

I just took a look and I see headline + snippets from stories in NYT, CNET, HuffPo, Reuters, CSM, Haaretz, and The Guardian to name a few, and headlines from half a dozen more.

Who gets the revenue from my viewing a few ads on the page?

The black and white solution seems like the most workable one. France can let google use the snippets (not the stories) for free or they can opt out of the system entirely.

Sounds fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe while they're at it they should make the news websites share their revenue with Google if that revenue originated from a search. We're trying to be fair and not for example stuff our own corporations' pockets, right? Right?

If they don't want google

[Anonymous Coward]

to carry their news, google should happily comply.

The result should be sufficient to discourage anyone else from trying it again.

Hollande's strategy: sneaky taxes.

[CharmElCheikh]

Francois Hollande's government has been pulling new creative taxes out of their asses for a little while now. That one's completely silly but it's not the only one. Another one is a new tax on beer. I guess that's how he figures he will raise France problems: raising even more taxes, yey! That's new and usually very popular, right? The fact that it's very sneaky could have worked... if people didn't notice. Some taxes are too silly to get unnoticed. Some others are surfacing up, like a new 15% tax on rents. People are getting pissed. He'd better put these taxes to EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT use or else he's out at next election.

Re:Hollande's strategy: sneaky taxes.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Francois Hollande's government has been pulling new creative taxes out of their asses for a little while now.

+5, Informative, thank you. This story sounded like a sneaky populist tax all along.

Another one is a new tax on beer.

Wow, that one ought to rile Slashdot folks . . .

Now, having just returned from a vacation in France, and meeting some really nice folks there, I understand de Gaulle's 246 kinds of cheese comment. But why does the stinkiest cheese always seem to end up as President?

How about slashdot?

[lookatmyhorse]

I bet most of people here don't RTFA. And TFS in slashdot is quite large compared to google news.

I thought the global news source was google

[bugs2squash]

The papers just write down what they read online.

Re:I thought the global news source was google

[tomhath]

You're thinking of Wikipedia.

The right to be stupid

[SirGarlon]

I have to side with the French newspapers on this one. They own the copyrights to the material they write, and should be able to (try to) charge for others, including Google, to use that.

As many people have pointed out, it's hard to see how this will work to the newspapers' advantage. They are saying "no" to free advertising. But, if they want to assert their rights and cling to an obsolete 20th-century business model, good luck to 'em. AFAIK the law is on their side.

Now if I were a shareholder in French media companies I might feel this decision was not in my best interest. But, happily, I'm not!

Re:The right to be stupid

[sildur]

They do not need a free advertising which translates in no views for them. Remember, they think people only read the summaries, which is totally wrong, as you can check on slashdot, where people does not even read the summary.

On the other hand, threatening french people to stop indexing french sites will not work. They will create a french baidu and they will forget about google. Nowadays, google does not have anything special, it is only popular. You can create a google clone if the original does not suit your needs.

Re:The right to be stupid

[Githaron]

Have you ever used Google News? It uses just the title and first sentence of the article. It is basically a news search instead of a general search with a news feed of the most recent entries. If don't know if their are Fair Use laws in France but I don't see why Google would owe the news sites anything. They don't even have ads on the site. My guess is that they only run it to encourage people to use their other products that do have ads or cost something.

Re:The right to be stupid

[sFurbo]

They own the copyrights to the material they write, and should be able to (try to) charge for others, including Google, to use that.

No, they should be able to stop Google from using it if they don't like the terms. If only there was some easy way to politely tell Google not to index certain pages. Then the french newspapers could do that, if they don't want certain readers to read what they have freely put on the web.

Re:The right to be stupid

[Ash-Fox]

On the other hand, Google could just not display ads on those pages that contain their links.

That's a very good point: empty "content"

[concealment]

That's a really excellent point. People have been complaining for decades or centuries that the news is either contentless, or yellow journalism, or salacious.

There should be a news source for people who really don't care about Honey Boo-Boo. Usually, that's a high-quality newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times.

I wouldn't mind if we lost all the "news" that was contentless, yellow or salacious (gossip). The perception is that many more people "want" that news than not.

It could be that as newspapers go bankrupt, we see another part of the equation: more people are willing to pay for real news than for the Honey Boo-Boo, or rather, that people who like Honey Boo-Boo "news" aren't willing to pay for it.

Re:That's a very good point: empty "content"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, the majority of people desire the useless celebrity news and other titillation articles. If there was no market for it, it would be limited to the trash on supermarket checkouts. Just look at what is served up as TV programming these days. Even the more serious channels are full of fluff, fabricated ghost / alien "documentaries", and reality garbage that follow people around while they do their boring jobs.

Right now it's a massive business serving trash as news or TV. It brings in eyeballs which are sold by the makers for advert slots. Turn it off, don't buy, and they'll soon wither and be replaced.

Re:That's a very good point: empty "content"

[AthanasiusKircher]

There should be a news source for people who really don't care about Honey Boo-Boo. Usually, that's a high-quality newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times.

Hmm... except my perception of the Journal and the Times is that they too often are pretty loaded with crap. Just about anything that pretends to be "news" is. Take a look at an issue from the NYT from 10 years ago. Chances are that 85% of that "important stuff" on the first couple pages seems completely irrelevant now, and most of the remaining 15% is devoted to ongoing situations (wars, etc.) where daily updates aren't really helpful to most people. The in-depth articles that make up less than 5% of these papers on a given day are sometimes exceptions.

I wouldn't mind if we lost all the "news" that was contentless, yellow or salacious (gossip). The perception is that many more people "want" that news than not.

There's a reason why the supermarkets and other stores stock tabloids near check-out and not many issues of the New York Times -- most people want that crap. I don't want it, and you don't want it, but we're probably in the 2% of the population who doesn't.

more people are willing to pay for real news than for the Honey Boo-Boo, or rather, that people who like Honey Boo-Boo "news" aren't willing to pay for it.

I sincerely doubt that "more people" would be willing to pay for real news. I think that a small percentage of people are willing to pay for quality, which is true of any kind of item. But these are the people who already subscribe to a copy of the NYT or WSJ at home or at the office, even if they live far away from New York. The even smaller number of people who care about quality writing and less about frivilous news subscribe to weekly to monthly magazines (The Atlantic, New Yorker, various Reviews, etc.) that cover real issues in-depth, rather than the cursory treatment you get in a daily.

These are the people keeping those few quality news sources afloat. The rest of the populace will be happy with a Twitter headline of 140 characters or fewer, and they don't really want to pay for anything more... except maybe an occasional rag about "Honey Boo-Boo" at the check-out counter.

New paradigm for French news headlines

[davidwr]

If Google won't play ball, expect French news headlines and first sentences to start sounding generic:

Lawmakers vote today

Today's traffic

Tomorrow's weather

Defendant hears decision from judge

The real "news" will be 2 or 3 sentence down.

That's the Wall Street Journal solution

[davidwr]

Will these newspapers now put their publications behind darkened glass paper dispensers

The paper version of the Wall Street Journal has been doing this for decades: They only show headlines and article summaries above the fold, counting on you to want to buy the paper to read more.

Re:That's the Wall Street Journal solution

[Anonymous Coward]

They only show headlines and article summaries above the fold, counting on you to want to buy the paper to read more.

That's the reverse of what this person is suggesting. That's the paper version of what Google currently does. Hiding even the headlines and summaries is the online version of hiding the paper in an opaque dispenser. It's noteworthy that papers are regularly sold in containers that display headlines and summaries. Why should the online versions be different?

Google is far more likely to choose to stop showing headlines and summaries rather than to pay newspapers for them. Personally, I hope that Google drops them from the index entirely. How long until online sources displace newspapers entirely?

Re:That's the Wall Street Journal solution

[paiute]

That's the paper version of what Google currently does. Hiding even the headlines and summaries is the online version of hiding the paper in an opaque dispenser. It's noteworthy that papers are regularly sold in containers that display headlines and summaries. Why should the online versions be different?

Although I am entirely on Google's side here, in the analogy above, the newspaper would be arguing that someone else owns the dispenser and is making money by selling ads on the side of it - and that the only reason that companies pay the owner of the dispenser to slap ads on it is that people are stopping by to look at the headlines on the paper inside the dispenser.

Re:That's the Wall Street Journal solution

[TheEyes]

That's the paper version of what Google currently does. Hiding even the headlines and summaries is the online version of hiding the paper in an opaque dispenser. It's noteworthy that papers are regularly sold in containers that display headlines and summaries. Why should the online versions be different?

Although I am entirely on Google's side here, in the analogy above, the newspaper would be arguing that someone else owns the dispenser and is making money by selling ads on the side of it - and that the only reason that companies pay the owner of the dispenser to slap ads on it is that people are stopping by to look at the headlines on the paper inside the dispenser.

Except that Google News doesn't have ads. They just have the world's biggest virtual storefront, and they include an ad-free newsstand just so people drop by every day.

The only "ad" on Google News is the word "Google" at the top.

Countersue!

[jd659]

Since Google has some expenses associated with displaying headlines and summaries, they should just countersue the French publishers for providing the exposure service. The mediation could resolve this as "no one pays anyone", just as the current case.

Cut access to google search

[jd659]

Cut free access to Google search from the IPs of all the French publishers! Let's see how much news they can write without Google search.

What instead of Google?

[tepples]

Which web search engine have these control-freak news sites been promoting instead of Google?

Re:What instead of Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

;k;

I am one of those news surfing guy

[aepervius]

And you are wrong. It does not matter how much content they add. Look, most of the news, many of us (and I would dare , the majority) do not care at all about the detail, the title line are enough. "PSG win 1-0" "Hamas put a bomb in tel aviv" "Obama announce a new tax". "greece economy sink even more" they are news for which i will look at the title , may even skim the summary, then not even *bother* reading the in depth article.

As such the newspaper are right. I read google summary and the newspaper, despite having done the job of putting the article, will get nothing, whereas google will simply copy a few summary paragraph and get the doug.


Now you could argue all the way that the type of viewer like me is rare (I don't think so, from my colleague i know a lot of "skimmer" like that) but the bottom line at the end is google taking a *bit* of content from the newspaper, get advertising money potentially, and the newspaper *nada*.


Now it could be that if google drop the indexing of the article of the newspaper , the newspaper suffers in readership, but I am not sure of that. If I can't skim off google, I would be forced to go for the real source.

Re:I am one of those news surfing guy

[TheEyes]

Now it could be that if google drop the indexing of the article of the newspaper , the newspaper suffers in readership, but I am not sure of that. If I can't skim off google, I would be forced to go for the real source.

No you wouldn't; you just wouldn't bother with the news. If all you're doing is skimming the headlines for 30 seconds a day, then if GNews goes away you'll get your news from the radio or TV, or Twitter feeds or Facebook; you're not going to go to a news site and put up with their ad-infested drek. You, and those like you, are not a part of a newspaper's ever-shrinking audience: people who actually read the news, rather than get spoon-fed ten-second soundbytes and think that makes you informed.

Headlines or content

[Anonymous Coward]

Satisfied reading headlines... Maybe. But what those publishers miss is that i might be just as satisfied reading the headlines from their site.

However, -looking at the dutch situation- a number of publishers put up that amount of nonsense on their site. From ads, in full colour, preferably with sound or video, to other non-relevant contents. If i'm interested in politics i'm not interested in the royal gossip.

So, as far i see, it's really the papers themselve here that miss the opportunity of 'bringing the content the user wants'. Google, on the other hand, understands what the user wants. Just, simple content, without 'screaming'. Proper use of whitespace. In sane catagories.

The fact that google 'aggregrates' does not matter at all. There's one dutch site that, more or less, follows the same guidelines. Clear layout. No overly abuse of advertisements. And this site, whilst having no printed media, is a big success. And as far as the big -printed- newspapers go, personally i tend to avoid them.

For me, as user/internetter, it does not really matter if i click on a link to read and get redirected to a page on the same site or on another site. What does matter though is, if after clicking, i get welcomed by a full-screen popup ad. And a questionaire asking the 'most valued customer' what i think of their side. Meanwhile a video ad playing in the background, forcing me to lower the volume. Or better, close the entire page entirely.

It's really the publishers themself to blame for not delivering the content that _I_ want. Google, redirecting, etc. has nothing to do with it. Make a great website and visitors will come and keep coming. Make a sucky website and visitors will stay away. And, as enough others point out here - Google only brings traffic. If you fail to make a random visitor a recurring visitor - then it's your own website that s*, not Google.

Ads?

[PPH]

What ads? I don't get any ads with my Google News headline pages.

I guess if France wants their percentage of zero .....

Re:Ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't find any ads either, so I do not understand the claim the French papers are making about lost ad revenue ...

If you can't win, legislate!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are the law will pass and Google will stop indexing and drop them from the search.

The publishers will then be pissed off their money making scheme has failed but rather than remove the law, they will simply legislate harder! Attempting to sue Google if the publication or a reference to the publication appears in any cached page or possibly making the law retroactive.

.fr? what?

[Wandering Voice]

Thinking about the TLDs that site I visit are on, .com, .org, .co.uk, and .de, Im left trying to figure out where the hell this .fr is and if there has ever been anything of worth from a site using .fr.

Huh, oh well. I've got other things I need to catch up on.

Share what ad revenue?

[gr8_phk]

French publishers want to share in the revenue that Google earns from advertising displayed alongside their news snippets in search results.

First, there are no ads on Google news. Second, search results? What? People doing a search are most likely going to follow one of the links on the results page. I haven't seen anyone do a search and just browse the results listing and be satisfied.

Re:Share what ad revenue?

[Fastolfe]

First, there are no ads on Google news

I think they're talking about normal search results. Many people type something about a current event or a news topic and expect to see news stories and the like in the results. Ads get displayed near those.

I haven't seen anyone do a search and just browse the results listing and be satisfied.

For several years now the trend has been toward providing answers instead of 10 simple result links. There are many queries that are simply factual and can be easily answered on the results screen. For others, Google is doing an increasingly better job at surfacing the answer to your question in the snippets. For instance, [the actor from home alone] and [average lifespan of a fruit fly] yields several direct answers right in the snippets.

Re:Share what ad revenue?

[ZombieBraintrust]

People using the normal search results are not looking for news. Google only gets paid when the user clicks on an advertisement. People who click on a Toyota adverstisement after searching Toyota were not searching for news about Toyota. (This post is not paid for by Toyota)

Re:Share what ad revenue?

[Fastolfe]

If I hear about a news event and want to read something about it on the web, I will do a regular vanilla Google search (from my browser's search bar). Don't assume that because you don't do something, nobody else does it either.

Et tu, Slashdot?

[retroworks]

Slashdot has summaries of articles, snippets, and links to other publications. Necessairement, nous aussi devons payer, n'est-ce pas?

Re:Et tu, Slashdot?

[horza]

Under the new law, if Slashdot didn't pay then they will be liable for up to €300,000 fine for each link. Tout le monde doit payer

Phillip.

Middle way is already available

[jjo]

There is already a middle way available. Any newspaper can tell Google: "We've blocked you from indexing us via our robots.txt file. Share some of your profits with us, we will unblock you and everyone wins." Google wants to win, so it would voluntarily accept any 'everyone-wins' proposal.

Of course, this might not be a situation where everyone wins, but one where Google loses. (Asserting that everyone wins does not make it so,) The people at Google are smart enough to evaluate this for themselves.

Google get smoney

[geekoid]

from sone else to redirct peopel to yuor site.
I ca'n theklp but notice the argument has gine from:
"Google shows the article"
to
"Google shows a snippet and that prevent people from going to the site."
Both of which is poppy cock.

random grabbed snippet:
"By Serena Gordon HealthDay Reporter. TUESDAY, Oct. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Racial disparities in breast cancer survival persist, even after factors such as education, neighborhood and socioeconomic status are accounted for, new research finds."

Why wouldn't I click through if I was interested in breast cancer research? And how would I have known about it if I didn't go to google news?

Re:Google get smoney

[cdrguru]

OK, if you are interested in breast cancer that snippet just told you that racial disparities exist in survival rates. If anything meaningful about this was actually known, it would have been in the first couple of sentances. Since the first sentance says it is "new" research obviously there isn't much more to say about it. If you feel really strongly about this topic you can probably go read the 1000 words on the real page about how nothing more is known at this time but for most people they just got as much as they needed to know.

Google is doing everyone a big favor by condensing things down to what you need and leaving out what you don't. I suppose if you had breast cancer and were African-American you might want to read the rest of this article in case it says where to go to get treatment like a white person would but otherwise Google is saving the electrons that would have been used up showing you a useless page that doesn't say anymore more than the summary.

And yes, Slashdot is clear proof that people often don't even read the summary - the headline was all they wanted.

It would be interesting to see what happens if Google stopped providing snippets and stopped collecting headlines and just made up stuff they way they thought it should be. This would eliminate the problem completely and might work out even better. The only question would be, what would a made-up headline link to?

Other possible situation

[Anonymous Coward]

Newspapers A, B and C tell Google: "We've blocked you etc. Pay us." Newspapers D and E (who were in shade of A, B and C before) tell Google: "We don't mind if you go on indexing us for free"

D, E and Google wins, A, B and C lose and come back crying, just like newscorp after getting themselves delisted from Google earlier.

Ballance

[jklovanc]

On one hand there are some people who only read the summary and do not go to the site so the site loses some revenue.
On the other hand there are articles that would never be found without Google indexing them and displaying the summary so when the person clicks the site it gains some revenue.

It seems to balance pretty well to me

France?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does a Quick Google search" Nope never heard of them.

Do you have reading comprehension

[aepervius]

"One, you've obviously never visited Google News and just talking out of your ass. The snippets there are 1-2 sentences long."

Read again : I am saying that for many of us, 1-2 sentence is enough. We don't need the in depth analysis. Either because we don't care, because it would go over our head or because we have no time or because we make a conscious choice or because we know more than the journalist or...or.... Bottom line is that we don't need more.

"The snippets there are 1-2 sentences long. There are also no ads on google news page." There are (sometime but not always) advert when you search for the article on a subject in google (note : not google news) which is the part which get dropped in case of removal from indexing. The part people keep saying "drop them".

"Two, if you wouldn't read those articles based on titles, what difference does it make where you've seen that title? Naturally, you read news only on topics you find relevant, what does news aggregating have to do with this?" That one is even easier : if there is no news agregator I am forced to find my news on the web site of the news purveyor which WILL have advertising.


It is quite easy really. Google news dropping all french journal snippet will not be bad for journals because there won't be an alternative rather than going for the source. And dropping from indexing as many poster says bring the same problem. Basically the end game is google serve no news whatsoever in their .FR domain. And french are forced to go to the journals. or Google keep them in news and in index and journals get a cut.

Re:Do you have reading comprehension

[Anonymous Coward]

...Google news dropping all french journal snippet will not be bad for journals because there won't be an alternative rather than going for the source. And dropping from indexing as many poster says bring the same problem. Basically the end game is google serve no news whatsoever in their .FR domain. And french are forced to go to the journals. or Google keep them in news and in index and journals get a cut.

There are plenty of alternative news aggregators. The user will just skim the news headlines and summaries somewhere else. If the French news companies don't want to be indexed, then they can use robots.txt.

Re:Do you have reading comprehension

[The1stImmortal]

Just a point - if all you need is a one-liner, then the news sites are wasting their time with you. An RSS feed, a news ticker on TV, walking past a newsstand, or even word of mouth would be all it takes for you to get your news, in which case the papers probably wouldn't have generated any income from you had there been no Google News anyway. So either you're not the target of this issue, or the newspapers are trying to find a way to suck down money from Google that they would not have previously been entitled to.

For those that remember print newspapers

[Larry_Dillon]

How is this much different from reading the headline through the glass at a paper vending machine? The newspapers ought to be paying Google for the traffic.

Re:For those that remember print newspapers

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this much different from reading the headline through the glass at a paper vending machine? The newspapers ought to be paying Google for the traffic.

Vending machines don't have a third-party hawker covering the machine with a blanket, holding up a copy of the newspaper, and removing the blanket only when you have looked at five advertisements of the hawker's choosing.

Monopoly muscles

[damaki]

Many commenters here oversimplify the problem. Do not forget that Google is in a monopolistic position. Deindexing newspaper web pages could be considered as Google using their monopoly as an advantage.
And then, it becomes much more interesting as Europe is constantly probing many companies for such evil monopolistic behaviors. Europe could force google to index these newspapers, and France has much more legislative influence over Europe than Belgium which attempted the same kind of tax, several years ago.

Re:Monopoly muscles

[SEE]

Europe could force google to index these newspapers

Only if Google continues to have operations in the EU. Moving Google's European operations entirely to, say, Switzerland, would be annoying but not impossible.

Re:Monopoly muscles

[jjo]

The problem is not forcing Google to index these papers, but forcing them to index and then forcing them to pay for the privilege. The French newspapers seem to be saying that Google listings are tremendously damaging to their business, and Google must therefore pay compensation. The newspapers seem also to be saying that this is very valuable damage, so valuable that Google must be forced to continue damaging them. Sounds a little inconsistent to me.

Re:Monopoly muscles

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry , I have to disagree with you. Google is NOT in a "monopolistic position". Here in France it's probably the most prominent search engine, but everyone is free to use another one.

Google should ask those newspapers to pay a fee , or a click based fee for french newspapers because appearing in Google News as it is now is simply free advertising. No fee ? simple: not referenced by Google!

To "damaki": And as you like the "do not not forget" sentence: Do not forget that Google (and other search engines) provide free tools used by everyone in this country : government, industry, merchants etc. Imagine just a second if the provided services were not free , how would they cost ?

If it is not sufficient here are some steps to follow:
1. de-index all French government sites, as well as left parties(Socialist, Far Left, Communist, Greens, etc ) web sites.
2. do not answer to http requests from France but instead put a big message like this: "Sorry but due to some legal issues with your government, we are unable to fulfil your request" or in French :"Nous sommes désolés mais en raison de problèmes légaux avec votre gouvernement, nous ne sommes pas en mesure de satisfaire à votre requête"
3. decide a paid right to use for government, administration and ... newspapers.

Just a few thoughts from a poor French sentenced to live in a communist country led by a socialist apparatchik

 

Re:Monopoly muscles

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the French government would force Google to index French websites. As soon as France does that, no international company will do business in France, since if they do then they'll become de-facto French state-owned.

Re:Monopoly muscles

[zigfreed]

Many commenters here oversimplify the problem. Do not forget that Google is in a monopolistic position. Deindexing newspaper web pages could be considered as Google using their monopoly as an advantage.

They would be deindexing at the request of the French legal system, not at the request of management.

The monopolistic position you're referring to is search, which is equivalent to Bing's search (which Bing has the data to show). Continuing with the Bing-Google equivalency hypothesis, adds will be removed from the French news page, creating no ad revenue.

I have no problem whatsoever with this.

[mumblestheclown]

I know this is slashdot, and today we are on the "non-GPL" side of the mirror so we must pretend to hate IP law and "information must be free" and all that, but really, I have no problem whatsoever with this.

google derives substantial advertising revenue by republishing essential portions of clips of news from other sites. google's use clearly fails EVERY PRONG of the USA fair use 4-pronged test (yes, i know this is france, but the basic principles still apply):

1. Purpose and character of the use. - Google's use is not by any stretch of the imagination purely educational. it is for profit for the purpose of driving advertising revenue to google.
2. nature of the copyright work - there is no doubt that the news items in question took substantial original research and belong to the french organizations in question. even if it is a fluff piece on lady ga ga, the fact that google can monetize it suggests it has value.

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken - google is taking enough that clearly ad revenues are being drawn from the legitimate creator - in some cases, it is most or all of the ad revenues. true, google might drive visitors to the sites too, but for example, i am often driven to NYTimes articles through google but read the articles at NYTimes - not google.

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market. - if google is monetizing it, the legitimate creators and publishers aren't.

i can't for a moment see why google has a case. I've seen a lot of moaning about "how france wants to be off the web", but that's far from a compelling argument. i want a web where the rights of legitimate creators - be they programmers working under GPL or newspapers are respected and NOT be bullied about my megabillion$ youtubegoogle.

Re:I have no problem whatsoever with this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is slashdot, and today lots of us are on "Google's the root of all evil" side, but really now?

Single sentence and a headline from an article without ads alongside it is "substantial" and "monetizing"... Well, I hope you liked being here on /. you used to make this comment, because it quotes a lot more than Google and has ads right there on the top. I don't think it'll live long enough if we apply _your_ notions of "fair use" with all the fines and royalties Dice'll have to pay.

Oh, and I'd like citations on "clearly ad revenues are being drawn from the legitimate creator" and "if google is monetizing it, the legitimate creators and publishers aren't", because Goog claims 4 billion click-throughs per month.

Re:I have no problem whatsoever with this.

[jjo]

While you are right that Google's operations are covered by copyright, Google indexing is done with the tacit permission of the websites indexed. Any website that wants to stop them need only set up a robots.txt file. Some in France are implying that Google has an obligation to copy French newspapers, and pay royalties for the copying. I can never see Google agreeing to this. If they had to, they would shut down Google News in France instead.

Google bans the French

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of just not indexing the French sites, why not index them anyway and tell search users the truth?

We at Google would love to show you the results of your search, but unfortunately due to the greed of French politicians, newspaper publishers, oh what the heck, every French person or anyone who refuses to bathe on a regular basis, or is a non-shaving female, or eats things such as snails and frog legs, or believes that they were doing just fine resisting the Gerrmans, anyway, due to these short-sighted, brainless priggs, we at google are refusing to show search results for any French site. (we do recommend visiting the Louve in Paris, it has some nice artwork).

BTW, better wine can be found in California (google Sacramento wine), better food can be found in Italy (google Florence), better museums (google Washington museum), and nicer people can be found almost everywhere.

What would you expect ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What would you expect from the country that invented VAT ?
I'm French btw ... and I wonder everyday what we have done to deserve our politicians !

Suing a shopping mall

[kawabago]

This is like suing the shopping mall your store is in because people in the mall don't want to come into your store. It's not the mall's fault!

push the de-index button now

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should put push the magic de-index button immediately.

Then add a "please index me" button with new terms of service to GWT.

Problem solved.

Here we go again with *perceived* losses

[Anonymous Coward]

The publishers want to be able to charge Google to compensate them for ad revenue losses

"The publishers want to be able to charge Google to compensate them for perceived ad revenue losses." - TFTFY

Here's the deal - if I didn't find it in Google, I would never go to your news site - ever! Since I find it in Google, I might *might* visit your site.

If I do, you get the ad-bucks, if I don't, Google does.

As it is, you as news sites lose absolutely nothing. Google can just forget about aggregating your news altogether, and then we'll see how much you actually lose that you gain right now.

Somebody sold you a rotten carrot when you pushed this to the courts - now you're gonna have to eat the moldering, festering thing. You're all a bunch of fucking morons for listening - the only winner here is your lawyers you stupid fucktards.

A humble suggestion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google should propose that news sites specify a citation fee as a percentage of ad revenue in robots.txt, and agree to automatically pay whatever citation fee the French news sites ask for *if* they cite a news story from that site. All the news site has to do is register their bank account information with Google, so Google can pay them when the cite their news article.

The news sites should agree to that deal; it establishes a straight forward market place for automatic citation of news articles. The seller sets their price, and the buyer decides if they are willing to pay that price. That's fair, right?

Then Google can choose to avoid citing any news site that asks for more than %0 ad revenue per citation, unless that site agrees to pay Google for advertising space to balance the fee. Or set any other policy they like with regard to such exchanges. After all, Google can't be forced to buy goods or services that they don't want. And the news sites can't complain that Google is taking unfair advantage of their content if Google doesn't cite their articles.

If Google's interests would be served by paying such fees, they'll pay them. Otherwise, they won't list the site, and the French news sites lose out on being listed because they were too greedy. Supply and demand drive the exchange, the way open markets are supposed to work.

This, but you explained it poorly

[tlambert]

The eventual equilibrium saddle for this, after everyone is done punching and counterpunching, is:

(1) The new law destroys the fair use provisions of France Intellectual and Property Code, Art. L. 122-5(3)(a)
(2) Content providers may request payment for content on what was previously "fair use"
(3) Google offers free listing to those who allow indexing of content (a cross-licensing agreement)
(4) Google considers indexing any content requiring payment to be advertising, and charges for it
(5) Net zero money actually exchanged
(6) France taxes the "listing" and "advertising" transactions

The result is a net loss in revenue for both Google and the French newspapers by the amount of the tax.

I'm pretty sure that the only news sources not opting into a cross-licensing agreement would be state-run news organizations.

One final point: Google could always just set up the advertising fees formula such that they always balance at a net zero loss to Google after the French tax, putting the entire burden on the French providers who do not opt into the cross-licensing.

Newspapers not source of news

[ZombieBraintrust]

But why should a newspaper get paid for that headline. The headline is nothing more than rewording of a press release put out by the researches. Shouldn't the researches get paid instead?

Doubtfull, Google won't make a stand

[SmallFurryCreature]

Google is going to cave in, they will strike a deal and once that deal is struck, everyone else will want the same deal and Google will find that it giving in for short term profits becomes very expensive in the long run.

If google gives money for indexing news sites, then why not slashdot? Why not my hobby site? Google would be wise to hold out on this but a publically traded company needs to show growth figures each month and dropping out of part of the market for long term gain, that is not on.

Re:Doubtfull, Google won't make a stand

[SEE]

Given how Google handled the French-language press in Belgium, and that they've already said they'd stop indexing French news sites if required to pay, I think it's fairly obvious that they will make a stand.

Indeed, the current major complaint from the French government is that saying they'll de-index rather than pay is "threaten[ing] a democratically elected government."

Zis is La France, Le Droit existe!

[WillAffleckUW]

In France, Copyright is King, not ze tax-subsidized Corporation.

Google should suspend its news services in France

[Rexdude]

..and direct French users to a page informing them that this ban was brought on by French publishers. See how they like that.

Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should focus on writing articles that hold the readers attention past the headlines and a few-sentence-long summary.

they do like summaries

[jjohn_h]

>>>
The reason the news sites don't like summaries is, it gives people a chance to decide if they are interested in reading the article before they click. It saves us from wasting our time.
>>>

Actually, they do like summaries. It gives them an excuse to whine about copyrights and hold the bowl.

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Google can't de-list because they would be sued for monopolist practices.

Therefore, since they can only use the link, it should be the lowest possible rating, and will appear on page 3,285,892. No content for indexing means the data gets the lowest rating

Re:Solution

[Ash-Fox]

They could just charge for access to "premium results".

How can they *not* strongarm the other

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean that Google, and only, is being singled out for such treatment? How is that justified?

Re:How can they *not* strongarm the other

[CCarrot]

Do you mean that Google, and only, is being singled out for such treatment? How is that justified?

IDK, maybe because they have fistfuls, bucketfuls and bathtubfuls of cash?

Reminds me of that business that sued google

[Beerdood]

I can't remember the details, I think it was a restaurant or hotel, maybe a bed and breakfast or something? I know it was here on slashdot earlier too, but the chain of events went something like this, sorry if I get the events a little mixed up or wrong.

Business sues google because of some reason, perhaps an unfavorable review or something
Business takes google to court, eventually gets a court order and forces google to remove the listing
Google complies, removes listing (not sure if they had to pay)
Google also removes the site listing from their search index
Business complains, "we didn't want all our info removed! Just the bad stuff!" or something along those lines.

Irrelevant why they do it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have adverts on Google News.

Ergo, no ad revenue from someone clicking on the Google News page and searcing there for an article for the news, so nothing to give to the news papers.

100% of zilch is zilch, and they cannot demand 100% of the ad revenue.

Ask yourself: why do the news papers not write a robots.txt?

Re:Irrelevant why they do it.

[91degrees]

They don't have adverts on Google News.

Yet a for profit company has this page. It presumably gets them revenue somehow.

100% of zilch is zilch, and they cannot demand 100% of the ad revenue.

Good job I wasn't specific about ad revenue then. I just said "revenue".

Ask yourself: why do the news papers not write a robots.txt?

How would that help the newspapers make money?

Tax pressure? Those..

[Anonymous Coward]

French nazis at it again!! My Baguette is vibrating from the suspense of getting it on with some French national socialists. It has an extra crispy crust.

What about the other aggregators?

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of those clueless celebrities who are trying to get some information about them off the internet and the first thing they do is to sue Google, as if it ran the whole series of tubes...

News corporations should be trying to make their content available through all possible means... phones, tables, feed readers, web applets. If there is one thing we have learned from Google, Twitter and Facebook is that the first step is getting people to use your product, monetizing it is a separate issue.

Gogle *can* be your friend

[Anonymous Coward]

Tee hee hee... What a maroon. If you think content creators are going to cease to exist because of Google you're in tin foil hat category. Go to any webmaster forum and you'll see webmasters *all* want Google to list them - For free. They complain when they're not listed *and* highly ranked. I have web sites on the internet. Abut 70% of my traffic is from Google (with a few hits from Bing and others now and again). If my sites don't rank well in Google search, it cuts my profits close to 70%. I won't pay for adwords, so I significantly depend upon Google's free listings. I can do without Google, but I'd be making in the mid-5 figures rather in the 6 figures. And - all my pages have the meta tag

With more compelling competition out of the way

[tepples]

They always have to option of making their site so compelling that people will bypass google when they want news and go directly to them.

That or they believe that if all news sites were delisted in Google, their sites would end up looking so compelling in comparison.

Me too!

[dissy]

The publishers want to be able to charge Google to compensate them for ad revenue losses.

Two can play at that game. I want all French publishers to compensate ME for lost ad revenue too.

After all, I put up a crappy news website with ads too, but all my readers seem to be going to the major publishers websites instead (stolen from me most likely).

These publishers are admitting they are at fault for my lack of ad revenue, and I am rightfully entitled to a share of all of their profits! I'm so glad to hear them admit they owe me billions upon billions of dollars.
I'll be awaiting my check publishers!

Yes this is off topic but fuck it

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'll bite. What subsidies *specifically* are you talking about? And don't give me any tax-deduction-of-busiess-expenses bullcrap since *all* companies get to write that stuff off, Google included.

So tell me, what subsidies?

I was going on developments in Brazil

[SmallFurryCreature]

Brazil has basically the same story and there Google seemed to be giving in.

I also remember their strong stance on pulling out of China rather then giving in. They are still in China.

Damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

The governement(s) in my country suck(s). They're 20 years late and consider the WWW like their failed "minitel" crap.

Being a frenchman in an US dominated world was already kinda special but now more shame is building up !

Or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google can tell them to go screw themselves, stop displaying their news articles completely, and people will just see the content from other, non-French, news providers, and that be that.

Search engine result pages are not indexable

[tepples]

For one thing, Google's brand is far stronger than those of any of these complaining newspapers or perhaps even all of them combined. In the analogy to an unlisted phone number, Google is like 411: a number that everybody is already expected to know. Other people have posted comments to this story mentioning alleged "arrogance"; this may refer to the newspapers' belief that their own brands are strong enough that they can draw hits without Google News, or that they expect users to find their articles through links from local newspapers that pay for syndication privileges.

For another thing, from a cursory reading of Google's robots file, most of these blocked URLs are the result URLs returned in response to a search query. News sites, on the other hand, consist largely of original text documents. The original text documents published by or through Google, such as help pages for Google services and anything available through a Sitemap: (see the bottom), remain indexable.

Hopefully Google will comply with French law!

[JakeBurn]

I hope Google does the right thing here as any good global economy participant should. If the French draft a law saying you must pay to access and display our hard work in your search results or you don't get access Google must obey this law to the letter. Forgo all search results of French media. I also really do hope there is someone at Google headquarters, right this very minute, drafting an asshole addendum to their mission statement. 'We will provide anyone access to a global search audience for free. If those terms aren't good enough for you we will happily remove those results from any search made through our service. If you want to be included at a later date, we will be happy to put your results back in for the low, low cost of $1.00 USD per result shown regardless if anyone clicks the link or not. Thank you for using Google.'

French != France

[tepples]

The same applies to English publishers delivering to a French audience.

In a post-paper news market, "delivering" no longer necessarily means delivering ink on dead trees to front doors. It can happen across jurisdictional lines, where neither employee nor server is located in France.

When you operate your services for France

How does making information available in the French language necessarily mean targeting the population of the French Republic? There are plenty of other places where some French dialect is an official language (medium blue, or the dark blue of Quebec) or significant centers of the francophone diaspora (green).

comply with their laws.

How does this mesh with the "just host it outside the United States" meme that I see in comments to Slashdot stories about enforcement of the DMCA?

Re:French != France

[Seeteufel]

There are international agreements on the issue. Targeting a French audience is well understood, that does not mean speaking French but also applies to English content.