All Posts Tagged With: "google news"

I’ve tried to make the case in the last couple of blog posts that it’s in Google’s interest to share ad revenues with news providers, by opening up Google News fully to advertising and offering a story-clickthrough-based rev-share program for participating publishers tracked by the service. Without throwing a good-sized financial bone at the news folks, putting more ads on Google News (there are very few currently) will create an uproar among news companies and give Google a black eye that will tarnish the company’s golden reputation.

I haven’t had the chance to meet or interview CEO Eric Schmidt (working on it), but seeing his public speeches I’ve generally had a good feeling about the guy. But after reading New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s column on interviewing Schmidt, “Dinosaur at the Gate,” I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll end up with a Bill Gates reputation. (That’s Gates the ruthless businessman before he turned to philanthropy.)

Writes Dowd:

“Why can’t Google, which likes to see itself as a ‘Don’t Be Evil’ benevolent force in society, just write us a big check for using our stories, so we can keep checks and balances alive and continue to provide the search engine with our stories? After all, Schmidt acknowledges that a lot of what’s on the Internet is ‘a sewer.’ He told me people don’t come to Google for ‘crap,’ but for what’s ‘useful.’

“He declines to pony up money, noting that newspapers could opt out of giving their content to Google free and adding, ‘We actually like making our own money for obviously good capitalist reasons.’

“He says: ‘The best way to get out of this is to invent a new product. That’s the way Google thinks. Incumbents very seldom invent the future.’”

Dowd didn’t ask the question the way I would have, but many of her commenters on that column got the point right. Wrote one Dowd reader:

“Google should somehow partner with the content providers not out of charity but because they won’t have anything worthwhile to search for in a few years if they don’t fork over some of their profits.”

And another…

“News, analysis, opinions, etc. need to be created on an ongoing basis. If as a consequence of Google not sharing any revenues with newspapers, the latter cannot operate any longer, then in essence Google would have slayed the goose that lay the proverbial golden egg.”

As I’ve said in my last two blog items, it’s in Google shareholders’ interest for the company to share its ad revenues with news providers. (And I don’t mean only newspapers and other big media companies; such a program as I’ve proposed would cover even the tiny new-media start-up news sites that Google News tracks and links to.) Schmidt’s unwillingness to come up with a mutually beneficial sharing strategy is just about to push the best journalism behind pay walls, a panicking-publisher movement that appears unstoppable. That’s not exactly in Google shareholders’ best interest.

So what’s the deal, Mr. Schmidt? Have you deleted Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra from the corporate mission statement? Because by not helping maintain a strong press (and this has NOTHING to do with saving newsPAPERS; it’s about saving quality journalism), you’re allowing a once strong watchdog press to lose its fangs.

This isn’t about charity to news companies that didn’t have the smarts to reinvent themselves for the digital media era. It’s about turning one of Google’s assets, Google News, into a profit center that also happens to serve a public good: financially supporting news organizations from big to small.

If Schmidt has his way, as expressed to Dowd, it’s not just dinosaur media like newspapers that will suffer. The news entities being formed today to replace newspapers will have less of a chance of making it, because there’s not enough advertising money to go around (and Google grabs so much of it now).

Schmidt told the Newspaper Association of America recently, “Let me just say precisely: It’s a sewer out there.” So I guess he’s willing to allow pissed-off and scared news executives to put the quality content of theirs that Google News tracks to go behind pay walls and the content universe that Google News tracks to get a bit smellier, rather than come up with a plan that prevents that and helps to reverse a journalism (NOT just a newspaper) crisis.

C’mon, Mr. Schmidt, do the right thing. Don’t be evil. It’s even in your best interest!

(Note: I have specifically suggested that a news-provider revenue-share program be limited to Google News, because it tracks a limited and select number of news providers. Sharing revenues on Google.com web searches that lead people to news sites is more troubling; it could mean that all manner of websites want their cut. Let’s not go there just now.)

What goes around, comes around. … Sometimes when you’re having trouble coming up with a solution to a difficult problem, it helps to turn things upside down and get a new perspective.

I’d like to see the newspaper industry, especially the big metro dailies which are in the most trouble and closest to collapse, look at things differently. Stand on their heads. Ditto for the Associated Press, which has been saber-rattling lately about closing off some of its content, even some headlines and blurbs that most reasonable people would consider to be “fair use.” (See this video exchange on the Charlie Rose show between AP CEO Tom Curley and HuffingtonPost.com’s Arianna Huffington, where Huffington makes a strong case that AP and other saber-rattlers (Walter Isaacson, Rupert Murdoch, et al) are trying to go back to old times of walled gardens for media content, which are destined to fail today.)

So here’s an idea for newspapers, the AP, et al: Think through how you can help Google make more money! Figure out how to spread your content much more widely instead of focusing on how to restrict its flow.

Stop looking to the Recording Industry Association of America’s beyond-belief-stupid approach to the spread of music on the Internet (“Hey, I know! Let’s sue our customers!”) as a role model. Stop pointing the gun at your own head!

There’s a hint of why I say this in my previous blog post about Google’s Google News, the popular news link aggregator. The search giant just recently began dipping its toe in the water in terms of adding contextual ads on searches via Google News, but it’s held back on opening the ad spigot fully. You can guess why: It would cause even more of an uproar among news providers, some of whom would block their content from Google and likely get pushed toward putting price tags on their content (hello, again, walled gardens!).

What the AP and newspaper publishers really want is money from Google (their “fair share”). As the new middleman between the consumer and the news provider, Google is able to handily scoop up so much ad money for its role that there’s not enough left over to support the type of strong news media we’ve been used to. Ergo, newspapers are being cut back in size and quality, journalists are laid off, and investigative reporting can no longer be afforded by the institutions who used to do the bulk of it.

In my last blog item, I urged Google to come up with a revenue-share plan using Google News as a platform and opening the ad spigot. It would benefit itself by turning on another revenue source, and help news publishers by paying them according to the number of clicks through to their content by Google News users. Everybody (not just newspapers, but any website publisher that produces news and is tracked by Google News) wins, and publishers have less reason to saber-rattle and threaten to commit hari-kari by walling off some of their content.

Will Google do this? I’ve used my contact network to try to get the idea in front of Google CEO Eric Schmidt; I know at least that his personal PR rep has it and I hope passed it on. I’ve tried unsuccessfully to reach Krishna Bharat, Google’s chief scientist and the original developer of Google News, but he’s ignored me so far (despite that I met him a few weeks ago at Stanford as he and 4 other people interviewed me for a fellowship). Apparently my powers of influence at mighty Google are nil.

The AP and the newspaper industry (still) have power. How about if instead of threatening Google, the news industry joins forces to approach Google with a plan that would allow it to fully turn on the Google News ad spigot; financially support the entire community of news providers, new and old (this is NOT just about newspapers); and provide a way to improve Google News by establishing new methods for identifying the original sources of news so that they can be put at the top of relevant Google News pages and search results?

Newspapers’ and the AP’s approach to Google cannot be adversarial. It must be designed not only to help the news industry, but to benefit Google’s shareholders!

Yeah, I know, AP’s Curley “says,” as he did on the Charlie Rose interview and elsewhere, that the AP is not targeting Google. (Google is a paying AP customer, after all.) But it’s not difficult to read through the lines.

When I read comments by people like AP Chairman Dean Singleton, who told the Newspaper Association of America recently, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories,” and press baron Rupert Murdoch say, “Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights? Thanks, but no thanks,” visions of the RIAA ring in my head. Those guys need to stand on their heads and look at the situation from a new perspective.

If they can achieve an intelligent dialog with Google and come up with a plan that benefits both sides, then newspapers can follow Huffington’s advice (of which I concur, 100%), and do everything they can to get their content everywhere possible online. Monetize it not just within your walled garden (website), but on every blog or website that your content appears on.

Newspapers and other old-mindset news providers are panicking. They need money! Now! I think they might find it if they stand on their heads.