Google vs The Newspapers - The Winner Is?
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I have been reading with much interest the challenges that the newspaper industry is facing as well as the assaults being made against Google. I have previously written about this subject and voiced my opinion about the subject, siding with Google. I am an admitted Google fan since I believe they are one of the few companies today that may still have some ethics. Until the day I am proven 100% wrong, I will back their endeavors.
Lead by Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. buddies, they are attempting to change the way Google collects monies from the ads Google places on news items, furnished by the likes such as the AP, Reuters and others. In turn Google provides over 1 billion clicks per month back to the news agencies. So what’s the problem?
The problem is best described by Jim Brady, the Washington Post’s former digital chief. He states:
“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.”
“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.’
“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.’”
So what’s the bottom line? Google built a better mouse trap and others can’t catch up.
What do you think.
Comments welcome.
8 Comments
Brian Hamilton
May 7th, 2009
at 3:20pm
I think that newspapers and Google are in a tough situation, and I think that we all know who’s going to be the winner in this battle. Google will win the war. There are some great newspapers out there, but Google is something that is beyond their power. It’s something that will be powerful forever.
Bret
mhz
May 7th, 2009
at 5:39pm
>>>> turn those leads into loyal customers.
Yeah right.
By now they’ve probably already seen that its a bigger barrier than he thinks it is, because on the net, there are hardly any “loyal” customers, because there is no leverage over the end user, and there never will be. The web technology and the open-source development / freeware apps will constantly open more and more possiblities for getting your information on demand from 2nd hand sources (such as we get here on these blogs.)
Many, many people just get their news from whatever looks interesting out of the top 5-10 Google hits. IMHO there is almost NO possibility of building a loyal web reader base large enough for the advertising revenue to fund your entire news corporation.
If you are a company that provides SOURCE material for news, and have staff reporters, etc. you probably have to get together with the other SOURCE providers and start some kind of cooperative group, so that you can all start selling your “news” or services without putting each other out of business.
If you own the source of gathering the news, and you join together to protect each other, you may still have enough leverage to allow charging for the information to those who want to publish it.
But that may not be viable, since some companies have their own media outlets such as TV stations, i.e. they have a means of publishing and making money, so they may not want to join the “co-op” to help save the smaller companies.
It may be a battle that was lost a long time ago, its just taken a long while to identify and clean up all the casualties.
laxoriginality
May 7th, 2009
at 5:53pm
Gosh, Brian I never thought of it that way. The Thousand-Year Reich, the permanent Republican majority and Google. All Powerful. Everlasting. Without competent providers of content why will we be searching Google? Without a mechanism for compensating people and organizations, who will dedicate the time and intellect to finding, verifying and explaining the events of the day? Google didn’t uncover illegal wiretapping, secret prisons, Abu Grahib, or a great mac and cheese recipe and doesn’t intend to. If AP, Reuters et. al. don’t survive then all we have is opinion, which is worth, approximately, what Google wants to pay.
Bill Claxton
May 7th, 2009
at 6:21pm
I think Marissa Mayer’s comment in the congressional hearings this week is telling http://tinyurl.com/pnaktl). She said: “it’s early days for newspapers in the digital world”. I think that is absolutely right, and they should get on with it.
David Myers
May 7th, 2009
at 8:31pm
I agree with Brian Hamilton. Google will most likely outlive newspapers. Not just because of the huge amount of power behind Google, but for one of the reasons computers were mass developed in offices for. “The Paperless Office”. Google vs Newspaper, Google will win. Google vs Digital newspapers? That might be a different story.
ccorsair
May 7th, 2009
at 8:56pm
come on there would be no news on Google with out news rooms and news papers . I don’t seem google having a news crew going out to get the news . the re-post waht AP and other post. News papers are part of that.
News papers have out done them selfs but letting yahoo and goolge do that reposting with out paying.
IF they charge them something less that what news stands charge they would get a better deal.
Online news is changing as well due to people being able to get the news vs online sites like Twitter and Facebook
CC
Our Community’s Help Requested ~ Windows Fanatics
May 7th, 2009
at 10:01pm
[...] the war between Google and print newspapers, who is the [...]
Ron Schenone
May 8th, 2009
at 8:38am
Thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts, It should be interesting to see how all of this plays out.
Regards, Ron