Execs reveal why newspapers don't block Google
To hear the poobahs of traditional media tell it, Google is to print media what global warming is to the polar caps. At many once-stalwart print publications, profits are melting away.
For several months, leaders at some of the nation's most influential newspapers and periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and the online arm of Forbes magazine have begun blaming Google and similar Web services for at least some of their deepening financial troubles. Google sells ads tied to the news blurbs it "scrapes" from news sites. It links back to the Web sites from which it acquired the content but doesn't share ad revenue with them. This isn't fair, many media execs say.
(Credit:
Forbes.com)
In all the very public bashing of Google, however, few if any of the critics has answered why they don't just cut Google out of the equation by preventing the search engine from indexing their Web pages. The task could be accomplished by inserting a single line of code into their URLs. If Forbes.com added a line such as forbes.com/robots.txt, content from the site would be rendered invisible to Google.
Representatives from the Journal and AP declined to comment for this story, but their Web sites speak volumes for them. None of the companies has severed ties with Google and risked losing access to the search engine's millions of users. Traditional print publications, which have seen ad revenue plummet, mass layoffs, and in some cases the shut down of operations, are now hopelessly dependent on Google to lure readers, says media executives. Jim Brady, the Washington Post's former digital chief, says the question of whether Google is good or bad for print journalism is almost irrelevant at this point. Print publications are helpless to do anything about it.
"Get out a sheet of paper and write down all the things Google does for you," said Brady, former executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, as he offered advice to his former peers in old media. "Google allows your content to be exposed to people who would never see it otherwise. If you're able to code your pages well, then you can get an awful lot of leads from Google. It's up to your site to turn those leads into loyal customers...Google is not going away."
Pointing fingers
That's not exactly how Jim Spanfeller sees it. The CEO of Forbes.com asked the question in an opinion piece he wrote for the blog PaidContent.com, "is Google being disproportionally compensated for what is fundamentally other people's work?" He said the answer appears to be yes. He claimed Google "makes roughly $60 million a year directing folks" to Forbes.com.
So why doesn't Spanfeller prevent the search engine from indexing the magazine's content?
"I don't know that this isn't a bad idea," Spanfeller said in a phone interview with CNET News. "But I think that would be hard to do without everyone's competitors shutting (Google) out as well."
This sounds like an acknowledgment that Forbes needs Google to compete and that the search engine may provide publications like his a valuable service. That's at least what Marissa Mayer, a Google exec, told Congress on Wednesday during a hearing on the future of journalism. Google sends 1 billion page views every month to print publications, Mayer testified during the hearing.
Spanfeller argues, however, that Google does do harm. For example, the blurbs the search engine obtains from news sites often includes enough information to satisfy the major questions about a story. For many people, reading a headline and synopsis about three more people dying of swine flu in Mexico is all some readers want to know. There's little motivation to click on links to the site that actually produced the news. To some in media, this violates copyright law.
Spanfeller says there's also frustration when a news organization pays professional journalists to do original reporting and then see links to stories written by amateurs--or worse, blogs that are little more than flimsy rewrites of their content--with higher visibility on Google than their own.
Spanfeller wants Google to do a better job of showcasing professionally created content, and "cease stepping on or over the line of fair use." This means he wants Google to start providing less information in its news blurbs and crack down on sites that use stories without authorization.
"We show users just enough to make them want to read more," wrote Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel, wrote last month. "Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rights holder...to remove their content from our index."
The cure?
So what do print execs want from Google? First, the search engine could cure a lot of ills by sharing ad revenue with print companies. After all, it's their content Google is selling ads against. Forget it, not going to happen predicts Brady.
"There was a fair amount of pushing from people at the (Washington Post) news group who said: 'We should make Google pay us for our content,' Brady said. "I told them 'They're never going to do it. They wouldn't give us a dime.' (They responded) 'Well then, we should block it.' I said 'Fine, we can go ahead and do that and that's suicidal.'
"Google built a better mousetrap than the newspapers were able to build," Brady continued. "That's part of the reason they're making the money they're making. At some point I don't know what you can do about that other than to try and work it to your advantage."
There are some media execs looking for new ways to get their content in front of readers without help from Google. Amazon on Wednesday showcased a new large-screen e-reader called the Kindle DX. The device is partly geared toward readers of newspapers, and magazines. Newspaper publishers Hearst Corp., and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. have said they will create their own e-readers designed to deliver their own content.
This kind of effort is fine with Brady. He says this kind of thinking is far more preferable than obsessing about the past.
"We have to ask, 'what's next?'" said Brady who plans to soon open his own consulting business. "That's where everybody needs to get to. Because Google isn't going away and they aren't writing us checks. Let's move on. We're all getting way too hung up on the past, with all the things we should have done 10 years ago, could have done...well, we didn't. Game over. We should be asking 'What are the new rules of this game and how do we best take advantage of them.'"
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. 
The "block them from our content!" reasoning is pretty funny, when you realize that would simply mean that news source would just vanish into obscurity while it's competitors would get more traffic.
If the newspapers acted as a block, then it would be Google who would be disadvantaged. Without Google, they stil have their content, without content, Google has nothing. The balance only works as it does now becuase Google is a single entity (with limited competition) and the web sites are very many and varied.
Still, I don't think the newspaces will get their act together to act as a single unit.
You are exactly right - if all 2,000+ newspapers banded together as one entity (including direct competitors in local, regional, and global news markets), banded together with the free weekly papers, and the likes of CNN, Fox, BBC, MSNBC, CNBC, regional news channels, local TV news channels and affiliates...
Not seeing that happen here. :)
/P
Newspapers would find themselves playing second fiddle to bloggers and social networks who would continue to reap the $millions in advertising that was originally being directed towards the traditional media. This group of "first at the scene" camera phone brandishing content gatherers is already playing a major role in the capture and instant discemination of news content, albeit currently with limited journalistic analysis... but a second group of comparative analytical bloggers is already emerging with the ability to provide an analytical layer across multiple sources of the same story on their blog sites.
This is a no win situation for newpapers. They are just going to have to embrace the new medium and find new ways of competing and attracting readers to their content platforms.
The unfortunate truth is that most people are not interested in news. The tabloids have taken over and thats is what most people want to read.
Google will only be curbed by anti-trust involvement, which needs to happen. Google owns the search market, and are saying here: You are welcome to opt out of our search market, or you can opt in and that gives us the right to use all your content for our comercial purposes. When Google has a virtual monopoly on the search market this is clearly anti-trust. Opt out or donate is not a reasonable stance. Do no evil hey, sure...
Not saying this isn't a problem, but they got where they are fair and square by building a better product.
The phone companies will be next to complain.
And there is no way you'll get a newspaper from one country to work with one from another because there is just too much arrogance and integrity (sometimes at the same paper) there for them to ally.
It seems that the newspapers want to have their cake and eat it too. They want all the traffic Google brings them - which is probably all that's keeping most of these publications afloat right now - *and* they want to take away the money Google makes for providing that service to them. And yes, it is a service Google is providing to them. Google could decide at any time to remove those publications from their listings, and then we'll see how these publications react.
I do agree that the usefulness of Google News is sometimes an issue - I have a hard time sometimes finding a decent story for a particular topic, because like the regular Google results, the listings are often stuffed with junk. But that's got nothing to do with ad revenue, all of which is Google's to keep.
You said:
"The task could be accomplished by inserting a single line of code into their URLs. If Forbes.com added a line such as forbes.com/robots.txt, content from the site would be rendered invisible to Google."
This is complete and utter drivel. It's like me claiming that construction of grammatically correct sentences can be achieved by inserting elephants after any contextually significant whitespace. It's just *meaningless*.
Perhaps if you're going to write articles about technology you might consider learning a bit about it first?! Or at least getting someone who does know about the things you're writing about to check it?
What you *meant* to say is that Forbes could add a *file* called "robots.txt" to the root of their website containing the text
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
which would stop well-behaved bots from indexing their pages.
20 goto 10
run
it's like that, in principle.
Google is doing business just like you!
Why do you think you should get content for free?? Do YOU work for free? Life is about money. People need to make money in order for the economy to work. Let me ask you this. Do you have cable TV or subscribe to a magazine, go to the movies or rent a movie? Those products have value and have must be purchased. Newspaper content has historical and entertainment value...why should it be free?
Bottom line...content can not be free. Advertising revenue alone does not support the people who provide the work.
IF THEY START CHARGING ALOT FOR CONTENT, YES ILL GO TO A BLOG OR FACEBOOK OR TWITTER .WHEN THE PLAIN CRASHED IN THE HUDSON RIVER BY MY HOUSE I WAS ON FACEBOOK AND REPORTED IT 25MIN BEFORE ANY BODY SAW IT ON THE NEWS ,SO ALL MY FRIENDS HEARD ABOUT IT BEFORE ANY NEWS AGENCY REPORTED IT !! FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Newspapers are putting content online for free, and the article already states how difficult it would be for publishers to act together to stop this. If google starts charging for their google news service, I will simply start using a different search engine to find news articles on a certain topic.
The online ones aren't necessarily meant to make money. If they do, great, if not, the actual newspaper is meant to make the money.
Just another case of an organisation being upset that they didn't keep up with the times. I wonder if this is what the RIAA will be like once it has ran out of people to sue. Because the model was mean and went and changed on them without asking their permission. Aww. Poor babies.
The newspapers are crying the same song (pun intended) as the music industry and soon the video industry. Technology marches on. If the public accepts said technology and it renders you irrelevent, then you have to make adjustments. Fail to do so and you die.
The quality of the content determines its price. That quality is determined by the depth of insight, exclusivity of content, verifiability of content, and perceived quality aspects like visual presentation.
I am looking forward to the Kindle DX becoming deliverable. The larger format will help the papers start selling larger format high quality ad space to their old full page advertisers, which has been the basis of their fall from economic viability. Papers have always made most of their money off large format advertising and classifieds. I believe that the classifieds are gone forever for most of them. Most former large format advertisers have not figured out how to make the transition to digital, just as they have not figured out how to market their wares effectively online. Additionally, I think that having Amazon manage subscriptions will provide me with an easy to justify way to pay the news companies for their hard work.
What we are seeing here is a transitional anomaly. Poorly managed companies have still not figured out how to enhance their perceived quality. The internet grew up on free, but as it matures it needs to go toward the premium content model. It is just like cable television: It grew up on advertising supported content, but as it matures, it derives ever increasing amounts of revenue from selling premium services.
If price were the only consideration, BMW, Mercedes, Porche, Lexus, Infinity, Rolls, Volvo, and Ferrari would be out of business. If price were the big thing, Cadillac would not be one of GM's big sellers. It is true you can do high volume with free, but is the "I won't pay for anything" crowd the one that advertisers want?
I don't think so.
Do these magazines and news organizations think Google is just going to roll over and give them money, please! Just close your doors and go into a business where you can make some money. Stop complaining and trying to make your case in the public domain. Forbes magazine, who cares!
1. Any articles from news sites if seen on other sites should always include the copyright note and link back and their site terms should state whether anyone can make money out of their contents.Like, free for non-profit news readers and commerical license required if you're making money of their content. Is it not simple to implement?
This should bring % of Google profit back to the news site.
2. News site can track the referral and display ads on their site if it's from Google or any online readers. Viewers visiting the site directly will not see any ads.
(If someone is making money when redirecting the user, you make the money only for that redirect).
Fact is, Google has well established and it's in the driving seat. Contrary to other posters, I don't think it's fair for google to make money of out news site contents.
Hope the news publishing association comes up with a new license terms for their contents.
It's a dumb idea to turn off search engine using robots. Allowing your content searchable doesn't mean anyone can make money out of it. Listing the site in search results is different from someone ripping off your content.
2: News sites already display ads for everyone, unless it is a pay site (i.e. you pay them $x.xx/mo). Sites already know who links to them and who refers to them.
Fact is, Google only links you to what you (probably) want based on your search string. THAT is what Google makes money off of, and what they display ads based on. Newspaper's content is only used for the blurbs, which let you know if you want to read the story or not. Licensing is only required (or worthwhile) when the content is being used (and fair use does not apply).
You show on the last line that you understand. This is all Google does.
"Spanfeller says there's also frustration when a news organization pays professional journalists to do original reporting and then see links to stories written by amateurs--or worse, blogs that are little more than flimsy rewrites of their content--with higher visibility on Google than their own"
They are afraid bloggers are taking their business. They are scared that they are not important anymore and can't change to the new business model.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/25/technology/25google.html?ex=1322110800&en=d35ff1ef67c0437a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Also, they'll never all unify. If one blocks Gogle, or even a lot of them, the ones that remain (and they one all block Google) are going to take advantage of that to get more traffic.
I hope newspapers die out. They're archaic. They eat up tons of resources in paper and it's unneccessary. It's sad to see that they're still fighting to stay up in paper. They give the excuse that a lot of subscribers still read the paper and don't use digital media. Those people need to wake up, care about the environment, and move into the 21st century. If they can't get their news the traditional way, they'll find another outlet. The newspapers are enabling them.
There's a certain appeal to reading a newspaper where you have it all laid out in front of you at once, and not only presenting a single story at a time. It's more open to browsing instead of tunneling in to one or two stories only.
Now the newspapers want money from Google for helping them get more page views? Isn't that like expecting the garbageman to PAY ME for coming to pick up my trash? No wonder the newspapers are going out of business, they are idiots. They should be THANKING Google for sending them more page views.
- by rshimizu12 May 7, 2009 11:33 AM PDT
- The Google news ad revenue issue is a relatively easy one to solve that can benefit both side. I say why not implement Google ad words on the newspaper sites and share the revenue or let them have the money in return for sharing content with Google news. One would require login to view news content on Google news. Another possiblity would be use profiled search results to drive ad words on the news sites.
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