Techdirt asks Could Newspaper Owners Really Be This Clueless?:
Just as stories are hitting the press about slow-to-innovate newspapers finally embracing the internet comes the news that a bunch of newspapers are quite upset that Google drives more traffic to their websites. This isn't a first. Last year, AFP sued Google over the same issue -- and Google yanked AFP stories out of their news index. This meant that newspapers that carried AFP stories lost out on a lot of valuable traffic. So, why are more newspapers trying to go down the same path? It would appear that like book publishers and telcos, they're all jealous of Google's ability to make money. The quotes from all three are almost identical. This latest one, from the newspapers is: "They're building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content." But, that's wrong. What Google is doing is making that content more valuable by making it easier to find. If the newspapers want to opt-out, that's fine -- but it ends up hurting them.
Apparently the answer to Techdirt's question is "yes, they are that stupid". But then again we already knew that since so many newspaper's websites require registration forms, which probably turn off the majority of browsers. Given that everyone is looking at the internet side of the newspaper business, hoping against hope, that somehow their web presences will allow them to survive a few more years, it's beyond baffling that they'd sue the very company that probably drives more traffic to them, than any other source.
As any blogger can attest, our archives would never get read if it weren't for search engines. However, because of search engines, the archives get read all the time, and more readers=more ad revenue (duh).
In fact, there's no question that appearing on Google is extremely valuable for a company. Just consider the fact that for any search, there are companies paying hand-over-fist for little text ads that appear next to the search results. The actual search results get this exposure for free.
We've been defenders of old media in the past, an in terms of the newspapers, we think that some of their local sites have a good opportunity to become well-trafficked local portals, where people search for job, weather, and movie information, as well as news. But the management (and we'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it's the lawyers telling them they have to do this) seems hell bent on closing off these opportunities. Perhaps there's something huge here, that we're not considering, and if so, we'd like to know what it is. But really, this just looks like a dumb move.
You might want to look into getting some ads integrated into your RSS feeds, a la Gawker. I only visit the site (and see the ads) when I want to comment.
Posted by: L'Emmerdeur | February 01, 2006 at 04:09 PM