Wall Street Journal, AP take aim at Google
Traditional media is once again rattling sabers in the direction of Google and other sites that aggregate news stories.
There's tough talk coming from managers at The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press that include threats of legal challenges and even name calling.
"There is no doubt that certain Web sites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet," Robert Thomson, the Journal's editor, was quoted in Australian newspaper The Australian on Monday. "It's certainly true that readers have been socialized--wrongly I believe--that much content should be free...And there is no doubt that's in the interest of aggregators like Google who have profited from that mistaken perception. And they have little incentive to recognize the value they are trading on that's created by others."
William Dean Singleton
(Credit: Media News Group)Also on Monday, William Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP, the century-old news wire agency, said at the group's annual meeting in San Diego, "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories," according to a copy of Singleton's statements posted to the company's Web site. "We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it any more."
Google has long said that it provides news site owners with a means to block the search engine from crawling their sites and indexing headlines. "Those who publish on the Web have a lot of control over which pages should appear in search results," Google said in a blog post. "The key is a simple file called robots.txt that has been an industry standard for many years. It lets a site owner control how search engines access their Web site."
The statements from the AP and Journal coming on the same day may have some people questioning whether there is a concerted effort going on within traditional media. There's not according to a spokesman for the Journal.
Regardless, the statements from two stalwart print publications raises questions about whether Google will be forced to open up a new front against yet another group of copyright owners. The search engine is currently defending itself against a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed in 2007 by Viacom, parent company of MTV and Paramount Pictures.
Google's plan to scan orphan books and preserve them in a database is also being challenged. Google has an agreement with the The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers to scan the books, but a group called Consumer Watchdog says the agreement is anticompetitive and has called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to intervene.
In the case of the AP, Google has an agreement to use the news service's content. That is perhaps why Singleton, who is also CEO of MediaNews Group--the fourth-largest newspaper company in the United States in terms of circulation--didn't mention the company in the speech by name. A company spokesman said that the AP and the more than 1,000 newspapers that own the service, just want Google's help fighting the "misappropriation of content."
Besides Google, sites such as Digg, The Drudge Report, The Huffington Post, and Techmeme are just a few of those that aggregate headlines from news sources and post them on their sites. Google takes a headline and a description of the story but readers must click through to the news source's site to obtain the full story.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
yup, we're ALL WRONG. we should be paying these nice people for the information. it's OUR fault. stupid consumers! so stupid!
There's need for a top to bottom business model overhaul.
They cut off Google and others from aggregating their data. RSS shoots up in popularity and completely supplants Google News, Yahoo News, etc. A whole new market will erupt, enhancing the ease and quality of using RSS, thereby negating copyright holders' attempt to monetize their information.
Information has value, but you need to create tiered levels of information, before you can charge end users. Upper tier information may include large resolution journalist photos and ad-free pages, while free streams will only include low-res and ad-supported pages, etc. Just charging people for information will result in a drop of usage as people will find other sources to get their free news.
I'm afraid these people have little clue as to how to adjust to the new paradigm.
User-agent: Google
Disallow: /
That would be a nice way for them to put their money where their mouths are. I'm guessing most users of news.google.com would hardly notice the difference.
Yes they could do that and then Google will not include them which seems to be the direction they are seeking.
Perhaps they should come knocking at the door of a place near where this comment has been posted.
With this no-win scenario, I predict we will have fewer and fewer large content providers. This could be a good thing though because it will create a lot of small players, encourage competition and, if we're lucky, improve the quality of news reporting. Time will tell... in the meantime, the lawyers are going to clean up.
And then what? Sue everybody? Every single user? No, that's not happening. So what next? Charge us, which Newsmax and WND stay free and create their own content? Oops. Complain and nobody is using them anymore? And Yahoo and Google just start using, say, a Mark Cuban company (more Far Right silliness) for the news? Then what? Oh, yeah, they might not survive by then...
I haven't read anything by AP since 1997. I don't read my local paper, which is a total waste of trees, and I don't watch TV news because I'm not home at noon, 4 PM, 5 PM, or 6 PM, I'm driving home. I don't watch the news at 10 PM, because, hey, that's still prime time for TV shows, and I don't watch the 11 PM news, because, well, I'm asleep. When I wake up, the kids want to watch Cartoon Network, Discovery Kids, or Nicktoons, so I don't get the news there. I just use the Internet. And that's where these simpletons in the so-called "mainstream" media like the AP are idiots.
I'm not usually a fan of big corporations, and these guys have made some huge blunders over the years, but what do you surmise is going to appear on Google or Yahoo if there's no one to link to? This fascination with getting the fast, easy, one-thought, one-line news, pre-digested so you can have cocktail-party conversation is terrifying. If you've ever watched "The News Hour" you can see that Jim Lehrer spends an entire hour on a story that the networks might spend 3 minutes on, and STILL can't get to all the angles of it. In the same way, you can't know what's going on in the world by reading a bunch of Yahoo's strung-together, disjointed "digests" of the news instead of the 100 column inches of the original story.
I'm the first to admit I'm a software person and pay for computers and servers. I do Alpha, Beta and so forth computer work. I can put parts into a computer but then I have no one to blame if that part fails or doesn't work to my satisfaction. I don't mind paying someone with the expertise to do that work.
I code and program from the earliest languages, although with a manual, to the latest, self-taught, but still with a manual at hand just in case.
I wouldn't work for Google or any other aggregator. Consulting is more satisfying to me, not to mention better paying. And even in today's economy I can and do pick and choose what and with whom to consult. I find it more rewarding and better paying.
That said, if any of the aggregators want to point to my work, poor or good, let them. It just makes it that much easier to find my next job.
Let the WSJ and AP complain. They're a dying breed, as far as print goes. It's the 21st Century. I read all my news online, and can get the full article to read. If they want to get with the program, put their content online and charge for it, let them. I'd pay and I'm sure many others would also. Otherwise, as said above, all they do is kill trees.
However, take books.Thats a different story for me. The aggregators can point me to a book that might interest me. But I want the feel of a book. And there's nothing as satisfying, to me anyway, as the smell of a new book. But I still use an aggregator to find, possibly, a book that might satisfy my interests.
I like aggregators and gladly thank them for pointing the way to me. AP and WSJ should thank them rather than complain. After all, without them, newspapers and news gatherers might cease to exist sooner rather than the slow death they're experiencing now. Even Tweets are more interesting than getting my hands on a regular newspaper. I can and do read them online.
Now if people would just stop using crappy things like gng 2 mves/mt me thr. English is an art that can be used to a much better result.
- by Heebee Jeebies April 7, 2009 9:47 AM PDT
- The problem with Google's statement "Google said in a blog post. "The key is a simple file called robots.txt that has been an industry standard for many years. It lets a site owner control how search engines access their Web site."" is that they have already disregarded the robots.txt file. They did that with one of the Obama web sites recently that had used that file to block web search engines from cataloging the site. Google disregarded the file and bragged about it to the pubic. The fact that the site was later officially opened to search engines doesn't mean anything. Google will do whatever they want no matter what.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (31 Comments)Google needs to be put down like the rabid weasel that it is. Google started out a good company but as they got larger they like other large companies have gotten greedier and more evil. They need to be stopped. I wish the news agencies the best of luck. I hope they send them back to the stone age or at least get the big bucks they have coming for their hard work.
Robert