Last week, the Italian government began an investigation into Google and Google News about allegations of anti-competitive behavior. (For more details, read Google’s initial response or Danny Sullivan’s take). Italian newspaper publishers claim that Google News is stealing readers from them who skim the headlines on Google News and never bother to click through. It is a familiar refrain, to which the obvious response is: If newspapers want readers to click on their headlines, maybe they should write better headlines.
But implicit in these arguments, and an investigation into how Google News is somehow stifling competition in the Italian news industry is that Google News dominates the news in Italy, at least online. That is not the case. According to comScore, the Italian audience of Google News is smaller than at least two of the largest Italian newspaper sites, La Republicca and Corriere Della Sera. In July, Google News had 2.4 million Italian readers versus 3.8 million for both of those Italian newspaper sites. (These numbers reflect only visitors from Italy).
While Google News is a decent size in Italy, it by no means dominates the news category. Not to mention that some portion of those 2.4 million visitors are presumably clicking through to news sites when a headline interests them. That could be an Italian news site, or an Italian-language site from a different country, or even a news site or a blog half way around the world. If anything, Google News promotes competition among news outlets.
It creates hyper-competition, which is really why newspapers (everywhere) are up in arms against Google. They don’t like the Web, but they can’t sue the Web. So they are going after Google instead.
The Italian publishers also allege that if they opt out of Google News, they won’t show up in regular search results, something which Google says is untrue. It doesn’t really make much sense. Presumably, a news article is a high-quality result. The more of those that Google can show in regular search results, the better those overall results and the more related ads it can run alongside them. That is how Google makes money, not from news. But if Google is indeed punishing Italian publishers who choose not to be in Google News results with less visibliity on Google’s main search page, they should be able to prove it with a few simple search examples.
only one man dominates the news in Italy: Berlusconi.
and btw, spelling errors: visibliity , Republicca
As we know Google is a computer-generated news site that aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide.wow!!Interesting information on Old Media they are fighting back. But Google News results with less visibliity on Google’s main search page, they should be able to prove it with a few simple search examples.
It’s easy to run a country when you own 90% of its media, no wonder the guy can cavort with hookers and still manage re-election!
Show more respect for the man. The “guy” you’re taking about is 72 years old and parties with young virgin teenagers every night. I bet Obama can’t take it.
Is this GoogleCrunch?
Kinda crappy that Google is protected so hard here.
Google is the new Microsoft. You like or not, but thats how things are.
huh? are u serious?
I agree with you, google is a monopolist better than microsoft!
I found this post very interesting. I also value that TC cares about news from outside the US.
if you want to see why google is monopolistic just do a search for any health condition. google health comes up tops.
http://www.goog...rch?q=arthritis
are we to believe that google health naturally rose to the top of the listings?
That is not a part of the “search results”. Google also links to: Mayo Clinic, Medline Plus, and WebMD in that box. It is no different than when you search for a stock symbol, “yhoo,” on Google and get linked to: Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, AOL Finance, CNN Money and Reuters in the box that appears.
clicking on the top most link leads to google health page. the other links to mayo clinic etc just fool the user.
and thanks for pointing out that they play the same monopolistic game on Google finance.
Interesting information on Old Media they are fighting back.
Microsoft Health starting soon as well!
Doesn’t surprise me. I use LaRepubblica and Corriere della Sera websites and iPhone apps almost every day. They are state of the art. Italians love their newspapers and are much more brand loyal than Americans.
If anyone is interested to read the Italian Antitrust doc. about Google vs Fieg (Italaian Newspapers association), you can read it here (italian lang.):
http://www.agcm...FF?OpenDocument
Marco, just to be precise, this is not the allegations document, is a notice of investigations beginning, which includes some informations.
Generally, when you file a suit at the Antitrust (I’ve filed some in the past), you require that some sensible informations are kept secret (”segretate”).
We need to wait for the conclusion of the case…
BTW, The Economist last week:
http://www.econ...ory_id=14327327
“A final approach is to harry online aggregators such as Google News, which indexes stories, for a share of their advertising revenues. That would at least bring some emotional satisfaction.”
Great story in The Economist to link to.
BUT just to be clear for readers here, The Economist’s take is *not* that Google News should be charged a share of ads revenues by the news providers. That article outlines the many different models news sites are trying out and says more that noone quite knows yet which model will work for them.
This is what we think of Internet in Italy.
It’s sooooo good trying to be an Internet startup entrepreneur here
There is no investigation by the government.
There is a case filed at the antitrust authority (sort of FTC in US) by the association of newspaper publishers.
Are newspaper publishers right or wrong ? that will be decided by the Authority.
I don’t judge based on speculations, without reading the documents; maybe you could give a good service to readers by publishing the allegations.
but, AFAIK, they are not public yet.
Let’s stand up for that underdog, Google. You bunch of shameless shills.
anyway i seem to understand that they’re complaining that if you opt out of news.google your pages do not appear in regular google.com searches — they are probably going to say that the dominating position google has is in search — not news-oriented pageviews.
If i were a google lawyer i’d file a complaint about the ginormous subsidies FIEG gets and google does not — but that’s just me
What’s more interesting is that American newspapers are still whining. What is it that Italy’s newspaper websites are doing that America’s papers are NOT? These companies need to get with the times or get over it.
Unfortunately Italian internet newspaper aren’t doing anything better or more accomplished than their American counterpart. If you compare Italian and America newspaper content-wise and tech-wise, American ones win single-handedly.
It’s just that people here is much more Internet illiterate, so they prefer to rely on the web transposition of the usual media.
German newspaper #Bild is soon starting paid content 4 iPhones
Why are the news companies any more “entitled” to revenue from covering events that happen in the public sphere than the news aggregators? Journalism is its own form of “aggregating” the news, just another pipe in the distribution channel to get information from the source to us, the public.
They need to fight it out to prove that they add enough value in the primary source reporting to justify their costs. But claiming they “own” the entire distribution channel rests on an untenable claim to copyright ownership over information that’s in the public domain anyway. 5-10 words in a headline alone could never be so unique and novel to be “owned” by a news company and rendered legally un-quotable by downstream information distributors.
“Why are the news companies any more ‘entitled’ to revenue from covering events that happen in the public sphere than the news aggregators?”
Ah. Well said!
Except, well. Let no journalists go sit through the city council meetings. Let them not pursue elusive sources and information. Let them not spend money to sue people who try to obscure that information. Let them not do all these things — and then let’s see what happens to the quality of the information in the ‘pipes.’
Good grief. People have gotten so accustomed to opening their mouths and filling up on the pablum of the Internet that they truly have no idea that any value remains in a free and strong press.
Italy in the headlines of TechCruch? At first glance I thought “Wow!”. But I immediatly realized that there aren’t good news…
I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know who is right. However common sense suggests that what is good for the final consumer is a good service. And Google News really helps news-browsing.
In a fair market condition, TheComplex is right: “These companies need to get with the times or get over it.”. However we’re in Italy, and publishers have just heard about Gutenberg.
What a lot of Italians read TechCrunch! And what a lot of Italians love the field of startup/entrepreneurship. A TechCrunch meeting here? Pizza, mafia e tecnologia. Tutti a casa mia!
AFAIK, in the US, what is good for the consumer is good. in Europe, from a legal point of view, we take a more complex view, including other parts of the ecosystem in the equation.
Typical comment of a person with a brain filled of stereotypes
Wow.
Your fantastic — and willful, I suspect — misunderstanding of newspapers’ grievance climbs to a new height.
Repubblica and Corriere della Sera are not newspapers of berlusconi…