Comments on: Google News: The End of News Indexing As We Know It?

By: Yahoo Newspaper Partnership Expands, Total Now 555 « Soft-Hack & Others

Yahoo Newspaper Partnership Expands, Total Now 555 « Soft-Hack & Others — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:58:17 +0000

[...] has this year started to cut its own syndication deals, but still doesn’t come close to the range and scope of [...]

By: Yahoo Newspaper Partnership Expands, Total Now 555

Yahoo Newspaper Partnership Expands, Total Now 555 — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:51:09 +0000

[...] has this year started to cut its own syndication deals, but still doesn’t come close to the range and scope [...]

By: » News to know: Google and Salesforce.com; Microsoft speaks on patents; HTC Vox | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Thu, 24 May 2007 21:34:33 +0000

[...] Google News: The End of News Indexing As We Know It? Matthew Miller: What treasures are hidden in the HTC Vox? Gallery [...]

By: Tips Dr.com

Tips Dr.com — Mon, 21 May 2007 20:48:16 +0000

Todays Tech 5/21/2007…

Some of the interesting technology stories making the rounds today.
Google News: The End of News Indexing As We Know It? Has Google started paying newspaper sites to include their stories? Surely not, but it is making the rounds, Google denies it here,…

By: whoopee

whoopee — Mon, 21 May 2007 16:34:56 +0000

the news companies can and should hold google to the same standard that they hold the licensees of their content. failure to do so now will result in the news sources becoming commoditized, putting google in the drivers seat the same way the record companies must now yield to apple. learn that lesson reuters, if you want control in the future, exercise it now.

By: David

David — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:19:16 +0000

Perhaps this is part of a larger agreement that involves print ads as well as on-line ads and revenue sharing?

By: Urls

Urls — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:17:37 +0000

Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of unbiased news? When companies pay to have their news on top how can we read both sides of the story?

By: aaron

aaron — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:08:02 +0000

It’s interesting that Topix was one of the aggregators that came to mind considering it’s owned primarily by the largest newspaper publishing company in the US.

By: Sameer

Sameer — Mon, 21 May 2007 14:32:53 +0000

I’d be shocked if publishers give exclusives to Google on their content at this point in the evolution of online media and in spite of Google’s dominance.

As to whether Google should show ads, yes they should. They are providing a service to the consumer who’s ok with seeing an Ad in return for good search results. Google, along with other aggregators, enable publishers get to show case their content at all available consumer touch points, a level of reach that 99% of publishers will find hard to attain on their own.

Unless publishers are totally confident that they brand is big enough to drive readers to come to their site voluntarily, proactively and often, why stop aggregators and syndicates from freely show casing your content as a short teaser? I’m sure Sun, HP or any large manufacturer would do cart wheels if ISVs and Distributors created pushed their products commission free. Your getting the eyeballs and click-backs for free. Take it and run.

By: Patrick Grote

Patrick Grote — Mon, 21 May 2007 13:40:31 +0000

One of the things no one noticed about Google’s Universal Search rollout is that with news now added to the results they are selling ads with the news.

I wonder if a cut of the ad revenue generated by pages with the news links will go to the news publications?

By: MrVegiita

MrVegiita — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:39:07 +0000

Not much of a news. Google news and Yahoo news in Japan are already known to pay hefty towards local newspaper giants such as The Daily Asahi Shimbun and Nikkei Shimbun. It’s good money.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:34:30 +0000

I recently ‘registered’ my site with Google news. But still then, only the most widely publicised stories make it to the front page. @Yong Su Kim is positive regarding licensing in that Google “could get some rich data feeds and also access to richer metadata inside the newspaper databases, they could provide a much richer interface.”

I suggest Google take a hardball approach, and not start licensing as they already have started, but rather request special feed addresses from those who have willingly opted-in for use by Google news, such as myself. I think what’d irk the media sites is when their story is not the main one amongst the 1000’s of others that have the same story.

By: dingwah

dingwah — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:51:29 +0000

Google also settled with AFP. My guess is that google wants the content for purposes other than just Google news. If they wish to deeply integrate news content across the Google universe they need to start paying license fees.

By: Ryan B

Ryan B — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:03:14 +0000

Google news is a pure media outlet. You get one or two lines in a story. News sources like AP saying they loose from Google News is just messed up, it isn’t like Google is posting the whole story.

The only thing I would argue in favor of the media is that if stories are flying in, story x would only be seen maybe seconds unless you search for it. The media can say they are loosing revenue because Google only shows the first page in categories.

In fact this is why I stopped using Google News so much. When I want to know the world news, there is more than 20 stories going on. A come back would be, “that is why you use the power of Google and search for it.” Well, if I want to know what happened today because I don’t know, how do I search for it?

By: Chris Saad

Chris Saad — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:00:46 +0000

As Duncan says, this can affect all sorts of services everywhere and if Google makes these deals it could:

1. Set a precedent that could be destructive for innovation and fair use.
2. If Google makes moves to make the deals exclusive the implications could be even more significant.

This is an unsettling move for the aggregation and syndication ecosystems that should be followed closely.

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 21 May 2007 08:25:51 +0000

“Google has argued that as they do not run ads on Google News, they don’t profit from it and morally this holds them in a superior position.”

Well thats not entirely true anymore is it? Through their “universal search” and other tests they’re integrating search results from google news into the organic search results - and that puts media providers content right next to ads where only google make money…

/Martin

By: Kevin Burton

Kevin Burton — Mon, 21 May 2007 08:09:22 +0000

You’re wrong that Google News would face problems if they ran ads. These publishers needs Google News more than they need them.

Even if they DO run ads everyone wins. Google News only shows a small fraction of the article mandating a clickthrough . A rising tide lifts all boats.

We run a pretty deep crawl with Spinn3r (and have similar issues with ads running on Tailrank) and we’ve only had a few people ask to be removed.

Kevin

By: Debbie Davies

Debbie Davies — Mon, 21 May 2007 07:55:08 +0000

I heard it like Tejas, websites you wouldn’t seek out for news pay Google to be a news provider and become pretty dependent on it as their primary source of traffic.

By: Tejas

Tejas — Mon, 21 May 2007 07:25:29 +0000

1. Displaying excerpts from news and displaying full content are two different things, and that could explain yahoo and google’s positioning difference in the news segment.

2. A year ago I read on some blog that the media companies actually pay google for the traffic that is being directed from google news to the media websites. Now this piece of story actually contradicts my knowledge.

By: SWAMII.COM

SWAMII.COM — Mon, 21 May 2007 07:15:54 +0000

Search engines existed on the net long before newspapers went online. We are also VITAL to the success and widespread adoption of the internet for consumers.

If media companies do not understand the internet model then they should not publish their content online. Anyone who publishes online should expect their content to be indexed by search engines such as ours or google’s. That’s how the internet works and flourishes.

This matter goes right to the heart of what the internet is.

By: Search Engine WEB

Search Engine WEB — Mon, 21 May 2007 06:46:02 +0000

BREAKING NEWS….

Google in partnership talks with Salesforce.com -

Advanced Web based software to compete with Microsoft

http://www.reuters.com/article.....7220070521

By: Yakov

Yakov — Mon, 21 May 2007 06:42:51 +0000

If Google were to display search ads alongside news’ search results it would be fair for it to share revenues from those ads with news publishers.

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Mon, 21 May 2007 06:19:11 +0000

sesh,
deleted.
RBA: I’d lump Digg as being closer to Google News than say Slashdot or similar sites (even TC) because of format. Digg links with headline + quote and although the site may be centered around voting the copyright use is similar to Google News, where as your Slashdots are strictly fair use plays, link, quote but then value add. It’s an interesting legal line probably best left to lawyers.

By: sesh

sesh — Mon, 21 May 2007 06:11:30 +0000

Is the comment above my isibingo classified as spam? Certaintly not adding to the discussion.

If Google is intending to buy the story, and display the story on its own site (like Yahoo! and others) with contextual advertising, then this might be the monetization of Google News. If they are having to pay for the privilege of posting a link to the story, then this is going to hurt other sites that do similar things.

By: RBA

RBA — Mon, 21 May 2007 05:42:19 +0000

Duncan, I think you’ll agree that “social news” sites like Digg aren’t doing the same thing as Google News. Having users post their own comment about something they’ve read and provide the link to the source is something quite different than scrapping content automatically and posting an excerpt it at your site.

I don’t even think that what social news sites are doing needs to be declared as “fair use”. It’s pretty much how the Internet works: you see something you like, you write about it and provide a link to the source. You just did that in your article BTW