Comments on: Execs reveal why newspapers don't block Google

Forbes.com CEO rips Google but tells CNET it needs search engine to stay competitive. Former Washington Post editor says time to play by Google's rules.

[faceless128]

The newspapers need to evolve their business model. Google makes money for them by sending people to them. They complain and want *more* money because Google also wants to make money? This isn't even questionable, like the movie or music industries, it's nothing like piracy. They can block Google from indexing their pages, but they choose not to. They can't stage a boycott unless they have a unanimous front, since any dissenters will take the lion's share of Google's hits.

[dyakoubian]

And these crybabies are CEOs and the like? If so, sell your stock in their companies quick! Grow up and adapt to what obviously is a paradigm change in information dissemination technology. Find out how to use it to your advantage. How stupid a criticism could there be that everyone who gets a digest or headline on google doesn't read the whole story on the original site. Jeez. Why don't we monitor communications between everyone and make them pay if they pass on something. Good god. Be grateful you can get a hit when someone is interested enough in the story to check it out. Give them something that they'll want to come back for.

[JayWes]

Well, to google or not google:

I read the Washington Post articles on-line. I receive an E-mail from the Washington Post directly without having to google, along with links. This leads me to articles on subjects that I would not have requested though google. It is easier and yes there are advertisements but it works for me. I can also search on items there.

RSS feeds are also available and I use them.

If I googled for news, I would have to think about the subject and then google it.

Also two technical magazines, that I used to receive as free publications, I now receive directly over the Web. these appear exactly on screen as the do in the printed copy complete with the advertisements that pay for the publication. Both ECM and CSE seem to be doing okay, since they went from paid subscriptions to revenue streams paid by advertisers, and since startling the web based alternative.

Technical people are not the only ones using the Web for news, the ELCA [Evangelical Lutheran Church] is also sending me daily news blurb.

[hawkeyeaz1]

With people like Spanfeller at the top, it is no wonder the new medias are failing; they don't get it.

Google does not sell a single ad based on the content of the newspaper--it sells ads based on the *search* terms. What did the newspaper do to have rights to that?

Google's blurbs are slightly more informative than the title the newspaper gives. If Google gives less, people would visit the site just for the info, and leave--higher traffic to the newspaper site, but no increase in revenue.

Google is not evil (at least in that way).

[t8]

Brady is right.
Newspaper organisations should take his advice.
Welcome to the Web.

[flared0ne]

Let me tell you what is NOT going to happen.

SOMEone ~IS~ (at some point) going to realize that there is a HUGE amount of detailed information available about where print media SHOULD be going in order to keep up with the times -- information that is coherently described and succinctly employed as plot context in sufficient detail to give enormously valuable information to some SAPIENT organization interested in surviving "these times".

A comprehensive survey of Science Fiction produced within the last ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty years, looking for plot context descriptions of news feeds and information-disbursement business models, will reveal a LOT of thought has already gone into postulating viable mechanisms and models. This would include a range of delivery mechanisms which rival and even out-perform the Kindle, et al, and which could be considered a gold mine of forward-thinking design options for some innovative entrepreneur.

Unfortunately, by their very nature, the majority of these "science fiction rationalizations" are now completely unpatentable, having become part of the "reasonably obvious" and (other than via copyright) by having been "freely released into the wild", i.e., they could be reasonably blocked from becoming or being considered "intellectual property" by or of anyone other than the author.

So if it cannot be patented, unless someone comes up with some innovative mechanism to purchase "rights" to an idea, what incentives will there be for developers to pursue implementing these ideas?? Well, finding a golden "AHA!!" and "well, of course people would pay for THAT" might equate well to "yeah, that'll float, so WE won't SINK".

Back to my original "what is NOT going to happen": the originators of these ideas are extremely unlikely to see ANY significant payoff from their ideas, EXCEPT if some farsighted organizer manages to correlate fictional output with developing technology and attempts to make sure credit is publicly given where credit is due.

Which, interestingly enough, IS actually a significant part of the plot line in several reasonably decent stories available out there. Life is an amazingly neverending story, eh?

[DaleHarrison]

The future of media will not be anything that looks like the current structures...

A lesson worth remembering is that at the turn of the 20th century, people had a transportation problem...and the solution turned out not to be a "faster horse"...but a Ford.

And one should note that the Ford didn't arise out of the "horse industry's" R&D efforts, nor the "Horse Industry Revitalization Act" nor the horse industry's attempts to experiment with new Business Models.

I think the future of the media business will look as different as Ford and Toyota's operations look from horse traders and blacksmiths.

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What's historically given value to editorial content is the relative scarcity of distribution versus readers (not the Kindle kind). Newspapers have historically enjoyed natural localized economic monopolies that allowed each of them to exercise monopoly control over the amount of content (and advertising) they allowed into their local marketplace.

Monopoly constraint of distribution and supply will always lead to prices (and profits) significantly above open market rates. Newspapers then built costly organizational structures commensurate with that stream of monopoly profits (think AT&T in the 1970's).

Unfortunately the Internet came along and changed all the rules!

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The dynamics of content replication and distribution on the Internet destroys this artificial constraint of distribution and re-aligns advertising (and subscription) prices back down to competitive open market rates. The often heard complaint of Internet ad rates being "too low" is inverted...the real issue is that traditional ad rates have been artificially boosted for enough decades for participants to assume this represents the long-term norm.

An individual reader now has access to essentially an infinite amount of content on any given topic or story. All those silos of isolated editorial content have been dumped into the giant Internet bucket. Once there, any given piece of content can be infinitely replicated and re-distributed to thousands of sites at zero marginal costs. This breaks the back of old media's monopoly control of distribution and supply.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him with the Internet..."

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The core problem for the newspapers is that in a world of infinite supply, the ability to monetize the value in any piece of editorial content will be driven to zero...infinite supply pushes price levels to zero!

What this implies is that no one can marshal enough market power to monetize the value of content in the face of such an infinite supply and such massively fragmented distribution. Pay-walls, lawsuits and ill conceived legislation won't allow the monopoly conditions to be re-constructed because only ONE VERSION each story has to leak out to start the cycle all over again.

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Another way to think about this is that once data becomes publicly visible on the Internet, its monetizable value rapidly dissipates to zero.

This is at the core of why Google can extract $25B a year from the economy without creating ANY content...what they create is meta-data about content (which CAN be monetized)...and all that meta-data remains non-visible. Only the results of decisions based on that meta-data by their search and advertising platforms is made publicly visible.

The lesson is that Google DOES NOT monetize other people's content...it monetizes its OWN meta-data. This is certainly one path to making the news profitable...not search per se...but various other approaches to the monetization of meta-data that's within the reach of publishers.

So the exquisite irony is this:
In the future, the only content that will have monetizable value is content that no one is ever allowed to read! (i.e. the meta-data)

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There are certainly ways to make online news profitable...and many of us are working to develop such approaches...but I can assure you they don't involve inventing a "faster horse"...

Dale Harrison
[e-mail]

[Rosesimone]

Google and other search engines should have to pay a "royalty" to the newspaper or news broadcast channel whenever people click onto the content that originally came from a particular newspaper or broadcast website.

This is an issue that is similar to the issue of people downloading songs for free.

In my work as a journalist I will spend many, many, many hours producing a story, both for my newspaper and my newspaper's online website. This process of interviewing people, crafting the story and producing accurate information is extremely time consuming ... and expensive.

Yet even though the story I produce is available "for free" online, the reality is that the ad revenues that my newspaper's print products generate are what pay my middlin' salary.

But now, of course, a lot of journalists are being laid off because everything is supposedly online "for free." There is some revenue generated from the online site that we have... but really, Google is the one making the really big bucks for the clicks on the content.

Fine. If my business of journalism is toast, so be it. I'll find other work ... but what bugs me is when people tell me that newspapers are not "necessary" because they get everything they need online for free. They seem to be unaware of the fact that what they are getting online for free is still largely being produced by people like me, being paid by somebody!

Sure, there are non-journalists who are writing blogs about different issues, but even those blogs are based on stories produced by journalists. And yes, there are some "citizen journalists" who freely write online content about issues they are passionate about. But most of this freely produced work is just commentary, written from one perspective, to promote the agency or the group or issue they work for ... those people are certainly not spending eight hours a day making dozens of phone calls to the different stakeholders involved in a particular issue.

So, the question is, if there are no more journalists because the traditional content channels have folded up, where will reliable news content come from?

The new "Google" model of content delivery is simply not sustainable. I think we need to go to a royalty fee model.

If someone clicks on a news story and Google gets ad revenue for that click, then a portion of that revenue should be paid to the news organization that produced that content.

[Rosesimone]

Google and other search engines should have to pay a "royalty" to the newspaper or news broadcast channel whenever people click onto the content that originally came from a particular newspaper or broadcast website.

This is an issue that is similar to the issue of people downloading songs for free.

In my work as a journalist I will spend many, many, many hours producing a story, both for my newspaper and my newspaper's online website. This process of interviewing people, crafting the story and producing accurate information is extremely time consuming ... and expensive.

Yet even though the story I produce is available "for free" online, the reality is that the ad revenues that my newspaper's print products generate are what pay my middlin' salary.

But now, of course, a lot of journalists are being laid off because everything is supposedly online "for free." There is some revenue generated from the online site that we have... but really, Google is the one making the really big bucks for the clicks on the content.

Fine. If my business of journalism is toast, so be it. I'll find other work ... but what bugs me is when people tell me that newspapers are not "necessary" because they get everything they need online for free. They seem to be unaware of the fact that what they are getting online for free is still largely being produced by people like me, being paid by somebody!

Sure, there are non-journalists who are writing blogs about different issues, but even those blogs are based on stories produced by journalists. And yes, there are some "citizen journalists" who freely write online content about issues they are passionate about. But most of this freely produced work is just commentary, written from one perspective, to promote the agency or the group or issue they work for ... those people are certainly not spending eight hours a day making dozens of phone calls to the different stakeholders involved in a particular issue.

So, the question is, if there are no more journalists because the traditional content channels have folded up, where will reliable news content come from?

The new "Google" model of content delivery is simply not sustainable. I think we need to go to a royalty fee model.

If someone clicks on a news story and Google gets ad revenue for that click, then a portion of that revenue should be paid to the news organization that produced that content.

[DaleHarrison]

How much it costs a lot to produce something is irrelevant to whether it 1) has value, and 2) that value is monetizable.

If you look at Google News right now, there are:
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4111 stories on Bank Stress Tests
2216 stories on Manny Ramirez
2513 stories on Riots in Nepal

If 99% of these stories had never existed (or remained hidden behind paywalls), there would still be dozens of versions covering the same story.

What's not sustainable is the enormous gap between the size of journalistic output and the revenue (from whatever sources) available to support it.

Publishing will have to get: 1) smaller, 2) more efficient, and 3) show some creativity about generating revenue.

Schemes involving non-market based coercion of Google is not where these answers will be found...

[ankhonthemove]

I have had the fortune of traveling outside the US, in particular Japan. We are very far behind the rest of the world in Technology. Rather than complaining, I would be sitting down in discussion with Google and finding out how they do, what they do. Its interesting to see that we knew Technology was moving rapidly upon us 10 years ago, but we were sitting around like fat cats and forgot to keep up. Well its here now, and won't be going anywhere unless, somehow, a brilliant 4 or 5 year old, discovers how to blog from outside the net, on a space platform. Forbes, and others like them should become a part of the solution, not the problem.

[xcopy]

The surprising thing is that most people are simply ignorant about who generates "news". News flash - it is NOT Google. Google is a parasite slowly killing its host, but the newspapers, magazines, and print media that hire reporters, pay for research staffs, and keep the corrupt politicians honest... Woe be to all of us if Google wins, because we're going to live in one ugly world without checks and balances..

The NY Times and Boston Globe are facing the dilemma right now of what they should do in a "free information society". The Globe may shut down because people don't but the paper, they don't pay to read the stories on line, and the ad revenue is drying up as Google siphons most of the money. The "news" on some guys blog is just a rehashed version of a real reporters efforts. Even network news center (where did you think Katie Curric et. al gets her news?) report on stories uncovered by the newspapers and other print media....

Google is not your friend in this battle, and while they perform a great service for those of us looking for information, we all need to insure there still is "news" and information reported for Google to siphon...

This is going to get worse unless we see a new shared business model developed.... i don't know exactly what it will be yet, but there is money to be made if someone can develop it....

[bdennis410]

AnyThing, AnyTime, AnyWhere. The grail of the Internet. We're getting closer all the time. Maybe this question about monetizing content would go away with metered bandwidth, pay -as- you- use.
Maybe not.
THere is an answer for Newspapers; I'd just have to charge for giving it.
Would my charge be a download charge or a royalty-based usage charge?

[commnow]

your global warming reference is getting closer as to why the media continues to sink. so out of touch, ecology, democrats, worn out platform that goes back decades. Look it up. It's a mainstay of the democrats and socialist parties. Do it. Look it up before you disregard it. Best thing that could ever happen would be to have these bazillions of news outlets go bye bye. The harm they do, all in an effort to sell some ads, is immeasurable. People that get their news from the news are morons. Why? Because they are completely not objective. They are selling, selling ads. Please, go away news people. Go move to socialist europe and live the miserable existence most of them are living. Stop ruining this country by growing the government. Wake up.