Google to publishers: We're not evil or illegal
A day after the editor of The Wall Street Journal referred to online news aggregators--particularly Google and its Google News product--as "parasites or tech tapeworms," and the chairman of the Associated Press announced an initiative to protect print media content from infringing use online, Google has fired back in a blog.
The gist of Tuesday's blog post, penned by Google associate general counsel Alexander Macgillivray: don't point fingers at us.
"We show snippets and links under the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the United States Copyright Act," he wrote. "Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rightsholder, in this case newspaper or wire service, to remove their content from our index--all they have to do is ask us or implement simple technical standards."
As for the AP, Macgillivray noted that Google already pays the wire service to reprint its articles and photographs. A dispute several years ago led to this agreement.
Of course, Google News is far from the only aggregator out there. Digg, Drudge Report, and the Huffington Post are also big players. But Google is unquestionably at the top.
For the past few years, as many mainstream media outlets (particularly on the print side) began to lose revenue, influence, and readership, some of them had a pretty clear message: blame Google. At the same time, Viacom still has a billion-dollar lawsuit against Google's YouTube over pirated video content. And much of the publishing industry is far from signing on to Google's book digitization initiative.
With struggling newspapers in a panic over whether offering content online for free might not have been such a good idea in the first place, Google--the ultimate source of free content--is an even easier target.
But Google says it's part of the solution, not the problem, and insists that its search and aggregation products only serve to help drive traffic to online news sites.
"Users like me are sent from different Google sites to newspaper websites at a rate of more than a billion clicks per month," Macgillivray said in his post. "These clicks go to news publishers large and small, domestic and international--day and night."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Let's sit back and see how many of them actaully block Google's search bots....
Google should stop including them in their index for one week - unannounced. Watch their traffic and ad revenue drop 20-30% for that month, and then ask them whether or not that still think Google is evil.
Spare me the rhetoric... Print media is dying because the Internet is here and here to stay. Instead of trying to innovate, they're trying to keep us in the past. Blah Blah Blah... Google FTW.
Im glad theres a few people out there that understand the situation from other angles!!
I'm saved from countless trips to libraries thx to google
before I used to use torrents to downlaod certain books illegally cause they are so darn expensive
but now thx to google books I can read through and check it out first legally
and then buy the ones I like
The print media needs to die for the ridiculous Prices they charge
Did you know that in India and a few other parts of asia the prices of Most books
are 1/10th the price we pay here in the States ! thats a crazy 90+% profit margin for these losers !
thank God for Google books....Google FTW !
Except that Google makes their money from ads and there are no ads on Google News, only links driving traffic to news sites.
So, if I am an aggregating agency, I should pay the news organizations money? Why?
People is coming to google to locate many information. They are not trying to locate sources, but locate information. If your source provides that information, good for you. Otherwise, sorry.
The same information is given by two sites. One that requires me to login; other that does not. Guess which site people will see?
Google categorizes by news articles. So, there are tons of sites that report on the same news. Too bad if yours doesn't come on that list.
The reason for having 100s of news papers in the past is because information could not be moved over larger geographical area within reasonable time. Given the Internet today, that's no longer true. So, perhaps only 10 newspapers are enough. But, let them do good journalism. Right now, it's all "yellow journalism."
No, the problem with Google News is the reason I quit using it. It's aggregation is stupidly done. They assume that a few very powerful news sources, many of them government controlled and some with a clearly undemocratic political agenda, are somehow "better."
For me, the final revelation came when Google was top-ranking the China government news agency's coverage of that silly runaway bride in Atlanta a few years back. The apparent stupidity of that didn't bother me as much as the fact that it was the result of the deliberately established policy I mentioned above and, I suspect, also part of a deliberate policy to curry favor with the largest repressive government on the planet. Money had trumped both good sense and ethics.
Has Google News changed that official 'bigger is always better' ranking algorithm? I doubt it, but frankly I don't care. The core problem, currying favor with the wrong sort of people by helping them censor the Internet and spread their propaganda, isn't that likely to change.
Goggle's problems aren't with the technicalities of the law. Google's problem is that it has grown into a enormous machine that lacks a beating heart. All its other problems flow from that.
site your source
I don't think google does it on purpose though, I think they just need to figure out how to give better ranking to papers according to their neutrality, or flat-out delete those with an obvious political agenda
My source was Google's public statements. The date of the runaway bride should tell you the time within a few weeks.
It's a readily understandable policy. I'm not faulting them for having a policy. There are thousands of news sources, so all can't be displayed on the front page. But good sense and good ethics need to guide the selection process rather than sheer size (or age, which was their other criteria). Google, being huge, seems to equate being huge with being good. That's a common failing, but it's one deserving of criticism.
China's government brutally represses political dissent, so why give it a top rank? Much better for Google to publicly state that, given the government's behavior, its news service will get the lowest possible ranking. You don't need to be well-versed in Chinese politics to do that. You just need a heart. At Google, greed trumps courage on a regular basis. Almost every business does that from time to time, but Google seems to do it more often than most.
Also, don't forget that bullying is often closely linked with cowardice. The same Obama who forced GM to fire its CEO also bowed very deeply when meeting the Saudi king, something no other US President has done and something that violates the stance we have taken as a nation since we rebelled against George III long ago. Why did he do that? Because GM is bankrupt and the Saudis are rich. Similar attitudes drive Google's policies. China is big and rich.
Even much praised news sources have their blind spots. The BBC has a tendency to develop a party line. During the critical years before WWII, that party line was appeasement. Britain was in the midst of a fierce debate over how to respond to German aggression. The majority view, appeasement, got an abundance of air time on the country's only broadcaster. The minority view, led by Churchill, got almost none. The BBC's much vaunted anti-Hitler fierceness came only after the invasion of France, a bit late to prevent war.
SImilarly, I have been told that Reuters' Middle-east news service shares the same building in which Reuters has staff who produce, under a lucrative contract, the news for the government broadcast services of several Arab countries. Does anyone want to argue that that doesn't slant its coverage of the Middle East? Bias like that should mean that Reuters gets a lower ranking on Google News. I doubt it does.
A great read is:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-the-ap-good-for-america/
How can they expect to survive when the business model they've used for over half a century is broken? I think blaming Google and the internet for your lack of foresight is counterproductive.
I don't go to the news sites and search there.
I go to a search engine.
Google alerts gathers what I'm looking for and then I'll go to the sites that have what I'm looking for - if they haven't already proven to be idiots.
If the news outlets don't want to be aggragated then fine - they'll slowly disappear into the backwaters of the net.
Google is EVIL. They bully people every day. People don't want their Google to take pictures of their houses and put them online. Google does it anyway. Book authors have rights under the copyright provision and Google decides to scan and put their books online anyway (it is 100% irrelevant if the author could possibly have benefit, without their authorization, they have no right to do this). Google decides to launch their own web browser (instead of fixing and rebranding Firefox) which dramatically increases the cost of developers to test their applications (those who think standards based browsers are all the same are kidding themselves). Google customizes open source for use in its datacenters and laughs at terms of the GPL by not giving their mods back (since gpl2 and even worse gpl3 allow this, they are at fault. But a company with purports to do no evil, should try and do some good).
I can take a photo of your house and put it online, and there's nothing you can do legally to prevent me from doing so. It provides valuable information for the public trying to get directions to their destinations.
Google is scanning abandoned, out of print books and making them available (free to libraries), and they have offered easy ways for the copyright author to reclaim ownership.
Finally, Google's new browser is heavily tested to ensure compatibility with most sites, and it provides a faster experience for the end user. I could give a crap about developers, as a consumer I appreciate their efforts.
Oh, and this is all done at NO COST to the end user. Again, it is all about the end user, and I love Google for that.
EVIL? I guess you can call them evil if you're a competitor and hate the fact that they're providing valuable services to the public for free.
Instead of still trying to kill the 'net, newspapers need to figure out how to make this new model work for them. Flailing their arms and trying to kill the net isn't going to work and only serves to make them look stupid. They're still stuck in the past and that mindset is going to kill them all.
I totally agree with NetworkPIMP, let these newspapers request being left out of Google's service for a month and see what happens to them. Their internet site will die just like their print edition.
2) This crap about violating peoples privacy about posting pics of their houses - again, spare me the rhetoric... if you live in a gated community (by choice), then you have an argument. Don't live in one? Can't afford it? boo hoo... reality check: citizens of this country are free to come and go as they please and can travel down any public street and cast their gaze upon whatever they wish. Google doesn't step onto their property - and if you don't want your house there, they make it fairly easy to remove it - but, again, it's PUBLIC roadway. Now, I believe Google is wrong when they tread into private property to populate StreetView, and they should be spanked for that - but taking pictures of that which is clearly observable from a vantage point on public ground is Google exercising the same right any of us have to do the same thing... they just do it for you so you don't have to travel there! Not interested in seeing it? Go somewhere else...
3) a rehashing of #1 - No one puts a gun to anyone's head and forces them to use Google's products/services for anything. People go where they find the greatest value - and for many, they find that at Google. This doesn't make Google evil, it makes them popular... and people who aren't popular always hate the one's who are, because they're jealous.
Saying Google doesn't pay for content is disingenuous and uninformed. They do pay the AP an undisclosed fee for their content. If a site doesn't want to be listed, they have that option. Certainly there are sites that aren't affiliated with the AP but I would imagine that smaller independent sites are high-fiving when their articles make the front page on Google News.
I agree that if sites asked to be removed from Google, Digg, etc. that they're visits/advertising would go down. I just think it would be more like 50%, not 30%.
FYI, I hit this article via Google News...
I didn't think it was possible but AP sounds even more clueless than the RIAA.
What's worse though, making articles available through aggregation or not having anyone read the articles at all? Isn't having news articles show up in a general Google search the same thing? Who would ever find most news articles if they couldn't find them via search engines at all? I understand that most news outlets would love to have all the traffic they have now but have it all be direct traffic but that's a ridiculous notion. Without news aggregators and search engines, I don't think that most news sites would garner enough traffic to stay afloat since they can't compete with CNN.com, Reuters, etc. for direct traffic. Local and regional newspapers need to gear up for the future because print newspapers aren't long for this world and at that point they're competing nationally and even globally for readership and advertising dollars.
I've got a feeling that news is going to become much more regional as many smaller news outlets will fail, contract or merge into viable 21st century entities that can survive on a
Is there a hidden catch here? Maybe they're Google Amish and believe being listed in an internet search can steal their souls.
It's truly scary that organizations this profoundly stupid have responsibility for providing the information we need to make our system work. It explains a lot about how a gang of thieves got away with the biggest robbery in the history of the world without a peep from our so-called journalistic sources. The sooner they crash and burn the better off we'll be.
Get used to it and quit trying to blame resources like Google.
Complaining about the ability to objectively weigh news articles efficiently and quickly without having to buy 4 or 5 news papers to do it, is just missing the point.