Comments on: Wall Street Journal, AP take aim at Google

Editor of the Journal says sites that aggregate news are "parasites" and says legal challenges are coming.

[muskratboy]

"It's certainly true that readers have been socialised--wrongly I believe--that much content should be free"

yup, we're ALL WRONG. we should be paying these nice people for the information. it's OUR fault. stupid consumers! so stupid!

[Maccess]

News gathering is a business that deserves a fair rate of return, just as transportation is a business. The real problem is that the horse drawn carriages don't fare too well against modern buses, trains, and aircraft.

There's need for a top to bottom business model overhaul.

[gerrrg]

I can see how this all plays out.

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.

[kpepps17]

The former big guns in the media industry missed the boat with the internet. The internet sprang up while corporate big wigs were counting what was in their pocket. But like on a GM dashboard, the buttons feel from the traditional media model. The tiered structure mentioned by gerrrg was not even a concept for the media giants as the speed of the internet passed them. Now, because of a lack of corporate foresight, profits are lackluster and they are attempting to stick it to the end user. Is the internet worth the $100+ per month plus additional subscription expenses? Here come the hackers.

[ddhboy]

Newspaper's last stand I guess. Sales are faltering and the guys in charge who've been working in the industry for 40 years needs someone to blame so why not blame google. Besides, all this information is available for free from newspaper websites who get their info from the AP like the NYTimes so all of this is moot.

[jbuberel]

Like the Google spokesbot said: All the newspapers would have to do is deploy a robots.txt file that looks like this:

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.

[t8]

Nice post.

Yes they could do that and then Google will not include them which seems to be the direction they are seeking.

[neterizon]

That wouldn't work for The Associated Press. AP news articles are posted across thousands of site by paying (and non-paying) users. So forcing all their users to do this will not be easy.

[gggg sssss]

hard to argue with teh papers - but they need google to allow viewers to find them, but dont want google skimming vieers off of the top. Easy to draw a parallel between google and pirate bay.Or torent spy

[solitare_pax]

On the one hand, they don't want Google to have them on Google news - but by doing so, they exclude themselves from all Google search results, don't they? A curious dilemma indeed.

Perhaps they should come knocking at the door of a place near where this comment has been posted.

[carey_e]

At the bottom of every WSJ article there?s a row of links to Facebook, Myspace, Digg, etc. Maybe they should make up their minds.

[themessiah86]

The only way any proper news ever gets collected or reported (particularly international news) is from experienced journalists who have the contacts and knowledge to be able to write about what is happening in the world. As much as it may frustrate some people, few are willing to do this work for free. Thus, news services such as The Washington Post and AP pay their reporters to report. When these articles get commandeered by a service that posts the articles for free online, the news service that created the content loses revenue and therefore the ability to do further reporting. And while those news services may provide articles for free (i.e. the NY Times), they get add revenue from visitors to their sites. So, Google's solution of requiring users to go to the original site may not be copyright infringement. But there are other sites out there that certainly are. This was all settled long ago by the Supreme Court in International News Service v. Associated Press, except now we are dealing with web pages instead of bulletin boards.

[ccwsoftware]

I wonder if Robert Thomson and the WSJ understand that the only time that some of us will EVER visit their site is when we spot something of interest at an aggregator site, and click through from there. I've never seen an entire WSJ article published at Google News -- only very brief, lead-in excerpts, sometimes with a small photo, with links to the WSJ source. If anything, the WSJ should be willing to PAY Google to index their site and present those snippets and links to a world of potential new subscribers. If they fail to see the value in that, then they should just close their sites because they just don't get it, at all.

[bleh222]

I wonder if AP has ever read the <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-stories-from-source.html">official google blog about this</a>. All they need to do is set up a site that hosts their content and google would likely be happy to point all the AP articles to it so they can get ad revenue from it.

[bleh222]

meh, i see your links work awesome: http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-stories-from-source.html

[bvdon]

This is a no-win situation for the large content providers. Yes -- they need sites like Google, Drudge, etc to get the high traffic numbers, but they are still giving it away for free when the people make it to the source sites. They may have advertisers, but that income is likely not enough to pay the bills. And clearly, the subscription model has not worked well.

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.

[Pete Saman]

The newspapers that survive understand the digital playing field. The others such as the WSJ are like the record industry trying to sell 75 minute CDs of mostly garbage.

[RighteousSoutherner]

These old timers are truly retarded--and a dying breed. Take Techmeme for instance, they actually promote the use of the very sites these guys own! I mean just how stupid do you have to be to not understand that they are simply brief snippets or synopses of full text articles--certainly not the entire thing. I'd also like to seem them get past fair use laws. Lot's of luck old fogies!!

[BtmnHatesRbn]

Let's see...I just go to www.drudgereport.com and www.wnd.com, read the news there, and move on. The AP has been so far to the Left that many are just ignoring a story with the AP logo on it.

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.

[darkridedp]

I'd much rather read a news story written by someone at the WSJ, or Washington Post, or Financial Times than from somebody's brother-in-law who puts up a website with his version of the news. You get what you pay for, and no one is going to go risk their life in a war zone, or in drug territory or go undercover to catch a politician (or a President) unless they're getting paid for it. Yeah, they have to be driven personalities, but they also have to be paid. It takes money, big money to support a network of reporters and producers and Drudge isn't sending anyone, anywhere to gather the news firsthand.

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.

[bradyme]

Tell him to do it! Then watch their media disappear from the headlines! Shoo! The wonder why they sunk!

[winstein]

It is hypocritical to have WSJ to attack Google while its own web site aggregate other news sources. I have found same content on the WSJ, on CNN.com, and other news web sites.

[aintnorainbowdorothy]

As a former journalist; sports, hard news, interviews with all the research involved and so on; I find it highly hypocritical of the WSJ and AP to yell. They regularly stole my news stories, especially one that involved hours of research before an interview. I won a statwide award for that interview. Then what happened. The AP ran it, with only a small blurb, at the end of the interview, in italics, which no one ever, including myself, reads. I got sick and tired of that mess, went back into computers. I did networking, consulting and so on. I found it more rewarding not to mention more remunerative. No, I wouldn't go back to reporting news, both hard and soft. Instead, I've been using and abusing computers for 41+ years. There isn't much I can't do.

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.

[Heebee Jeebies]

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.

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