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German Publishers Capitulate, Let Google Post News Snippets
itwbennett writes German publishers said they are bowing to Google's market power, and will allow the search engine to show news snippets in search results free of charge — at least for the time being. The decision is a step in an ongoing legal dispute between the publishers and Google in which, predictably, publishers are trying to get compensation from the search engine for republishing parts of their content and Google isn't interested in sharing revenue. The move follows a Google decision earlier this month — and which was to go into effect today — to stop using news snippets and thumbnails for some well-known German news sites.
They wanted Google to give them revenue or stop using their articles. So Google said, fine we will stop using your articles, good luck when you lose 65% of your daily hits since we know they come through us...
I'm trying to wrap my brain around how these news outlets thought it was bad for Google to send traffic their way. Seems like any news agency would want to be a high-placed hit on Google's, or anyone else's, news listing.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
When I search for news sights I use the little snippet under the link to see if that's the article I want to read, I don't just want to first paragraph nowadays, especially since most "news" sites wrtie like magazines instead of newspapers. Gone are the days of reading one paragraph that summarizes the whole story, they're full of fluff and links to "relevant" articles that I don't click on (mostly cause it's harder and harder to tell what's spam or malware type sites vs legitimate ones.
"Wait wait wait! We still want the free advertising that comes from Google's use of our content! We just want Google to pay us for the privilege of giving us a service we would otherwise have to pay for, in exchange for displaying content we already give away for free online!"
Sad. I get so sick of people griping about the effects of Amazon and Google (etc), without giving a second thought to just how much they already get in return for the relationship. Same idea goes for Amazon and Hachette - They have every right to refuse to sell at the price Amazon wants; they'll just never sell another eBook.
They didn't think it was bad. That's evident based on this story.
They wanted Googles money and tried to exploit outdated laws written 100yrs ago to modern technology to try and extort that money. You know, like what every other media organization that's currently dieing because of the internet is trying to do.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around how these news outlets thought it was bad for Google to send traffic their way.
Because they myopically stop thinking at "Google steals our content, grar!"
On a somewhat more excusable level, they just haven't yet come to terms with how people read news today. People (under 60) don't casually read the whole newspaper over breakfast anymore; they go to a news aggregation site and skim the headlines. When they find something of interest, they click through to read more - But, they don't necessarily click through to the Nowheresville Tribute, they click through to WaPo or NYT, or perhaps to a media outlet that focuses more on a preferred aspect of most stories (for example, reading about German newspaper contractual negotiations at Slashdot vs reading about them at Groklaw vs reading about them in Time).
20 years ago, you woke up in the morning, heard a "phhhpmp" at the front door, went over, saw the newspaper that you pay to get delivered every morning on your carpet under the letterbox, would grab it, take it to the table, make yourself breakfast, and then read. You'd read news from that newsppaer. That newspaper would take on the honored (or not so honored in some paper's cases) role and responsibility of guiding you through what's happening in the world. To that paper, that position was a relationship to be developed, nurtured, built upon. Your loyal readers would come back day after day, they'd actually subscribe.
Today, you visit a website on your tablet, phone, or PC, usually multiple times a day. Britney Spears' nosejob is a click away from your Twitter stream to the CNN website. An email comes in, and you, on the recommendation of your friend, reading a Huffington Post article about cats. Then you get another email from your mother, and you're on healthy-stuff.com reading about the seven fruits that might stop you getting cancer. Oh, and a person walks by your desk, and says "Did you hear? OMG you didn't? It's everywhere, terrorists just attacked the Dallas book depository, hundreds dead!", and where do you go?
Well, Google, You go to Google. You enter "dallas", and you already have a choice of articles to read, but you click on "More news about Dallas" and there are 50,000 breaking news articles about the incident at the book depository, including articles from news organizations you've never heard of, that are local to Dallas, whose views and coverage you'll respect for this one story... and then never visit again.
At no point have you ever said "You know, I'm going to get my news from the St Olaf Bugle, I'm looking forward to reading it tomorrow."
That is what they're afraid of. That's why several publishers are getting out of the newspaper business altogether, it's why Rupert Murdoch keeps doing stupid things like buying social media networks and starting enewspapers for tablets, and it's why German newspapers are not overly enthusiastic about having their work featured on Google News.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Google stopped displaying snippets and thumbnails Oct 1.. German Publishers relent Oct 23..
Now let that be another lesson for the history books..
Companies pay Google to advertise for them. These companies wanted Google to pay them to advertise for them. Never did follow that logic.
The publishers base part of their claim on a German online copyright law that came into effect last August, which gave publishers the exclusive right to the commercial use of their content and parts thereof, except in the case of single words or small text snippets.
We're talking about a country where you can't even rent out DVDs you own, unless you have an official licensed rental copy. This is where GEMA (their RIAA) priced Youtube out of the market per play. This is a country that supports making art owners pay artists a residual on art they own upon sale/auction (imagine you had to pay bricklayers or carpenters like this when selling a house). Similiar to england, you also have to pay taxes on every radio you own, every monitor (as it can be used as a TV, in theory).
Used to be that you had to have a monitor and was a quasi voluntary tax you could avoid saying you didn't have any of that (but the harassment was not worth it), as of 2013, every household has to be 18 euro /month ($22.75) regardless of TV or radio usage. We're talking about over $7.5B a year for truly shitty programming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Germany rose up in the 19th Century as an industrial power very quickly because they had cheap books, people could own an entire bookshelf's worth for a fraction of what it cost in England. A lot looser IP or even for some time, no IP. Now copyright holders and entrenched interest strangle everything.
Despite having a decent software industry, Germany is having a tough time keeping up with the internet. Nearly all the good ideas are implemented first in America and elsewhere, and then come to them. If the legislators allow it. The entrenched interests fight awfully hard.
They are certainly losing out to feed old and dying interests.
You lost me when you said something about there being books in Texas...
Google agreed to drop the articles. That's certainly fair. Somehow the newspapers didn't think so though. Why? Because they need Google more than Google needs them. Evidently they need that Google traffic so they must make money off it after all.
If a long snippet contains most of the information in the actual article, then that journalism is pretty damn weak anyway.
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