Google CEO Warns Newspapers Not To Anger Readers 328
Barence writes "Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hit back at newspaper bosses, warning them that they risk alienating readers in their war against news aggregators such as Google News. 'I would encourage everybody to think in terms of what your reader wants,' Schmidt said at a conference for the Newspaper Association of America. 'These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.' Schmidt's rebuke follows a sustained attack on Google by newspaper bosses such as Rupert Murdoch, who have accused the search giant of 'stealing' their content without payment."
Schmidt also suggested that newspapers need to expand their distribution methods to make better use of mobile technology, and a NY Times piece argues that the Associated Press' struggle against aggregators is futile since they're largely trying to give news stories to consumers for free anyway.
Yeah this reader's _____ (Score:4, Insightful)
First they discontinued my evening paper & replaced it with the morning paper, which I don't like. Then the idiot delivery woman keeps throwing papers in the middle of the street, where they get squashed by passing cars (or disappear completely). I've complained but the news executives have done naught to fix the problem. What's this have to do with the article? It all comes-back to the same root problem:
- They care more about the almighty $$$ then they do about keeping the customer happy, and that is why they will ultimately fail.
This Just In... (Score:5, Insightful)
When it comes to what news "consumers" want, Google CEO "gets it". Old media CEO's don't. Film at eleven.
OK, so this ain't exactly news, but jeezuz, how hard is it to grasp the fact that a large number of the eyeballs viewing your "news" arrive at your web site via a link on Google news?
Hey, Eric. Cut one or two of them off for a week. Given them a heads up first, and suggest that they pay attention to their traffic numbers. Then let's all ask their board of directors what they think of how things are going when no one "steals" their content.
Lose readers... how about lose news sources? (Score:1, Insightful)
What he says seems pretty self serving. Sure they risk alienating readers. The problem is that google is pulling them away from their own web sites where they hope to generate revenue.
Income is already bad enough that papers are going bankrupt. Bloggers are not the most reliable way to get accurate news.
His argument makes sense to him because he draws revenue from being an aggregator.
I seem digital delivery from news papers within the next ten years and google will be cut out of it totally.
Google Provides the Consumer Options (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing that Google does is provide the consumer with more options. Since I use Google News I am more likely to use multiple sources for my national and global news. I guess this scares the newspapers a little bit.
The newspapers should do some user surveys (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be willing to bet that there's a growing chunk of the online population who, like my self, may read content from newspapers, but only do so through online aggregators.
I never check the NYT, Washington Post, NY Post, etc. directly - either the paper or online versions. If I read an article at any of their sites, it's because it's been linked to on a blog or came through in an RSS feed from an aggregator.
They're assuming that people use their websites the way people use their newspapers, and that's probably not the case anymore, and surely won't be in the future.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the state of corporate America these days. When the options boil down to - spending 20 minutes of a computer analysts time to put a proper robots.txt file up or spend tens of thousands of dollars to drag another company into court - and you pick the latter option?
What's the real motive here?
I'm a little confused (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone please explain to me what exactly is these newspapers are complaining about? I just don't get it. If Google stripped all the content off the websites of these newspapers and attached their own ads to it, then I would see the problem, but that's not what they're doing.
Google News directs you to the newspaper's website. If I get to a nytimes.com article through Google News, it's the exact same website as I would be served if I typed nytimes.com into my browser and navigated to the website. Same content, same ads. Google is giving them traffic, so I fail to see what the problem is.
Is it that there are also ads on the Google News page itself?
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm a little confused (Score:3, Insightful)
He may be a lawyer, but he doesn't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
'These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more.'
He may be a lawyer, but he doesn't understand who the consumers are in the newspaper model.
Newspapers, like much of modern media, sell audiences to advertisers.
So asking the news media to think of their readers, is meaningless. They never do, except as a product to sell to the advertisers.
This is ultimately an Advertiser business.
Re:This Just In... (Score:2, Insightful)
" large number of the eyeballs viewing your "news""
Guess what, even more people get the chance to see the ads that Google serv.
I think its a tricky question. But face it, Google is using others work to make money, its not a favor to newspapers, thats just a side effect.
Another piece of the Bush legacy (Score:3, Insightful)
The big media companies had over 8 years to start throwing hardball questions at ol W, their failure to do so has rendered them useless in my eyes & in the eyes of many Americans.
Nowadays, it is pretty much assumed that if you want the full story on any given news article you need to go to at least 3 different sources (with at least 2 of them being non-mainstream.)
I dont even bother with newspapers anymore, just like teevee news, theyre nothing but fear and fluff. You dont get anything in-depth stories except about the kitty-cat who found his way home over 1000 miles.
You guys made this bed, you lie in it.
Re:Lose readers... how about lose news sources? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google isn't pulling people away - people are actively seeking news aggregators and Google happens to be one of the best. People just like to use aggregators when looking for anything, be it news, small ads, auctions, whatever. With eBay it makes it easy to find the best deal, with news it makes it easy to find more details or to get a more balanced view by comparing what different sites report.
If the newspapers wanted to they could provide their own news aggregator, showing news stories from other newspapers next to their own, and as a dedicated news site they could probably do a better job than Google. They just haven't grasped that it would work in their favour.
Re:He may be a lawyer, but he doesn't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
"Ultimately" is the key word that seems to be in contention. As you point out, you need to sell readers to advertisers. Therefore, annoying your readers and driving them away (which the newspaper business is doing with aplomb these days), will hit your advertiser-based business model pretty hard in the end.
I will absolutely agree that asking the news media to think of readers is usually meaningless, but that's because many don't seem to get who they "ultimately" serve.
Re:Google Provides the Consumer Options (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the state of corporate America these days. When the options boil down to - spending 20 minutes of a computer analysts time to put a proper robots.txt file up or spend tens of thousands of dollars to drag another company into court - and you pick the latter option?
What's the real motive here?
What you have here is a buggy whip maker suing the automotive industry in an attempt to save his job (or at least delay the inevitable).
but frankly how'd we get good quality content (Score:2, Insightful)
if newspaper organizations do not have viable model. In essence good quality news requires presence of high quality tools and personnel that can be deployed rapidly across the globe to cover a wide range of events. If they cannot generate sufficient money from their effort and go down who will do this job ?
News aggregators need news for aggregation. I havent heard anyone in slashdot help address this fundamental challenge.
this is not a tirade against google or argument in favor of newspapers but just wondering what is the new model of news media that we are conceiving if all or most of the traditional news media go down. User generated news is has too much noise to have any validity and lacks quality and predictability.
Re:He may be a lawyer, but he doesn't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with what you are trying to say 100%, but there is a bit of a tweak I'd make to how you are saying it:
For any product, there are the consumers of the product, and there are the customers who buy it. Those two sets may have zero overlap.
The consumers of a product are the actual users.
The customers of a producer are the ones who actually pay for the product.
The producer is only motivated to keep the customers happy. The producer is only concerned about the consumers to the extent that the consumers are also the customers.
For example, why do many brands of dog food have artificial color added (especially red)? Dogs really don't care if their food is meat-colored or not - they only care that their food is meat-flavored and meat-scented. But dogs are only the consumers here, and the dog owners (customers) want their dogs' food to "look good".
Why does the post office make it so hard to get off the junk mail lists? Because while you, the postal patron, may be a consumer of their service, the bulk of their money comes from the third-class (junk) mailers - hence the junk mailers are the real customer here.
While IT techs may be the consumer of operating systems and programs, it is the PHBs who write the checks - the PHBs are the customer.
Coming back on topic - while we the readers may be the consumers of the product the news agencies create, we are NOT the customer. The advertisers are the ones who pay - they are the customers.
Once you start making that distinction the motivations of the parties involved becomes clearer.
And I'd add another observation to the mix:
Many people are saying that the value in the product is investigative reporting - hence bloggers and aggregators are not a replacement for the "old school" news agencies. And investigative reporting is expensive, so the argument is that aggregators need old-school news agencies.
How expensive is it for Google to get Street Views of the whole planet? How expensive is it for them to get high-res photos of the whole planet?
Does AP really think that Google couldn't fund some Real Journalists to do Real News reporting?
This is Madness. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wrote a comment yesterday [slashdot.org] about how the newspaper industry has lost most of an entire generation of readers due to the declining quality of their product. Now they are standing to lose all of that generation, and the next one coming, by making their content effectively inaccessible.
Like it or not, most people under 30 get their news from the internet. Some will read the occasional newspaper, or watch the TV, or listen to the radio, but the bottom line is that they are spending more time online than all three put together. They're going to look for information and news online before they look for it elsewhere.
People want one click news. Google news, while it isn't perfect, is providing them what they want. An easy way to get the latest headlines, and to search for news topics that interest them and that may not have recieved general coverage. Think about what the service is doing. It's combining the strengths of online, national and local news sources, all in one feed. As a reader of news online, I can safely say that well over 95% of the news stories I have read online were come by via the Google news service.
Newspapers, for some obscure reason, don't seem to like this. Instead they would prefer to make it harder to find their content, and ultimately harder to read it. Imagine an online business that demanded that Google and every other search engine stop indexing their content. It would be lunacy, yet that's exactly what these newspapers are doing.
There is a fundamental law to Internet business, if I may:
It doesn't matter how high quality your site's content is. If people cannot get past the barriers between them and it, they will turn to your competitors, one of whom will have information they can access quickly and conveniently. Time and again it has been shown that the more open and accessible a site is, the more traffic it will accumulate. True, there may not be much quality control on the traffic (Myspace, Gamespot, etc), but if your site is advertisement based, this will not matter a fiddlers to you.
So here is Google, doing newspapers a favour, by making their online content easier to acess and read, ultimately drawing more eyeballs to the ads on their story pages. And what do they do? They spit in Googles face and demand cold hard cash for every ten word story excerpt. It's lunacy. The product of minds either deranged or deluded. These people seem unable to grasp the consequences of their actions, unlike Google, who has understood the mechanics of all this from day one.
If the The Guardian manages to get its content delisted from Google news and other feeds, then the only effect will be that I, and millions of others, will no longer click into The Guardian website. It will be almost as if their site did not exist. And because people are moving to online over print news, these newspapers will lose an entire generation of not just online readers, but readers period. They are asking to drink hemlock, nay, demanding to do so.
I don't know who is running these newspapers. But whoever they are, they clearly do not actually understand how the newspaper industry actually work anymore. They seem to be like the bankers and economists in the financial industry, who knew so little about their businesses that they, against all reason, rationality and common sense, threw all their money, reputations and futures away for nothing. There is no logic to the decisions of management at these newspapers, yet they persist in this folly.
This probably points to some underlying pathology in the way western companies in general are run. They seem to be quite happy to lose every last one of their customers as long as they retain complete control over the dregs that remain.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Newspapers abrogated their social contract (Score:5, Insightful)
long ago. It has been at least a decade, possibly longer, since American newspapers decided to stop reporting and become repackagers of AP feeds. If you saw Google News when it first started, that fact was so glaringly, embarrassingly obvious that they took it down. That is, every single paper they were pulling from had the exact same articles, pulled from the AP, with perhaps a minor title change or slight change to the wording. The San Jose Mercury looked almost identical to the Boston Globe.
Then you have the abject failure of newspapers to investigate and confront at least two of the biggest disasters to occur in the past decade, the thin fabric of lies the Bush administration peddled to take the country into Iraq, and the financial collapse that we're currently suffering through. They merrily went along with the charade. The Grey Lady, the New York Times, for instance stood four-square behind its shill Judith Miller then, and still employs the hack Adam Nagourney whose spintastic gibberish would have gotten his ass insta-fired at the New York Times of 20 years ago.
And the final vestiges of editorial spine are snapping. George Will published blatant, factually incorrect statements in an op-ed of his last month that the Washington Post has yet to even address, much less issue a retraction for.
Newspapers therefore abandoned their core value proposition, to be sources of useful information, a long time ago because it was cheaper. It's just taken a while for citizens and readers to realize that and act accordingly.
So really, the Internet is only killing what was already dead. But increasingly major investigative style news is being broken by bloggers and citizen journalists, so there is a hope that online real reporting will live again.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think being one of "the big boys" is mutually exclusive with being spammy, biased, or crappy...
Re:Lose readers... how about lose news sources? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pulling them away? Are you completly uniformed about the way it works?
I check m y news entirely through the google news site. *EVERY* single time I read an article
it takes me to the website.
Without google, the page hits from me and thousands of other users would never appear.
I agree with an ealier suggestion. Fine, lets have google go down the list and just stop aggregating their news.
Let their add revenue drop even further as page hits drop. Then when they want to be included again *CHARGE* them for it.
Re:I'm a little confused (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem is that you didn't go to the NYT homepage (and see the ads there) before going to the article page (to see the ads there). So while Google is sending you to a page full of ads, you're still bypassing a different page full of ads. If Google (and other aggregators) weren't bypassing the homepages of newspapers, they would (theoretically, at least) get twice the revenue from each visitor.
The problem with this thinking is that the newspapers are failing to realize they are getting visits from people who do not normally visit their site. They should view this as a source of new potential customers, and market themselves accordingly. By checking the Referrer header in each request, they can add snippets to their news articles ("Welcome Google News Readers!", or "If you think Slashdot is cool, check out our Tech section", or some other variant). This is a golden opportunity for newspapers to extend their audience, and they're blowing it completely.
Re:The newspapers should do some user surveys (Score:3, Insightful)
They're assuming that people use their websites the way people use their newspapers, and that's probably not the case anymore, and surely won't be in the future.
It hasn't been the case for years and it will continue to not be the case in the future. They are doing exactly the same thing that the RIAA and in many ways the MPAA has failed to do...get users to view their content on their terms instead of their customers' terms.
I do not want to go to an advertisement filled website that takes 100 seconds to load due to widgets, unrelated information, and stupid third party bullshit that many newspapers have on their sites. I don't like RSS feeds that aren't full as I have no interest in clicking through from my RSS reader to read your content just so you can pretend that an advertiser got his money's worth because I may not have blocked the ad. I also don't want to click through an article to drive up pageviews so that you can compete with other news sites online and show your current and potential advertisers meaningless data about how many people read your site and how many eyeballs will see their advertisements.
I spend a lot of time every day going out and getting information in my local area. I sit through the city council meetings, I watch them online when I don't want to drive there in person. I scour crime reports, I contact state agencies to get restaurant inspection information, and I ask local municipalities to provide me with how much they are spending and on what. You know what I get paid? Enough to cover my personal Internet costs and a little more, sometimes. Sad thing is while I'm not pumping out 25 articles a week, I'm pumping out 7 or 8 that are more informative and don't read like a press release for the city discussed.
Newspapers need to cut back and go back to basics or rethink how you're moving forward.
No. The Internet is creating madness. (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is destroying the independence of newspapers by reducing the value of their content below what it costs to generate it. This opens the field to special interests - the "news" promoted by Rupert Murdoch, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the RIAA and all the other shills for one industry or another.
How can citizen journalists get the resources to investigate Government wrongdoing, or wrongdoing by large corporations?
Google is going to turn news into a combination of press releases and dog show reports. And this is part of its declared mission. Its mission is to deliver eyeballs to advertisements. Google does no evil - to its advertisers. But it will involve all other content into a race to the bottom, until the only real, hard news is once again, as it was for most of history, available only to an elite minority who were prepared to pay well for it.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Google needs them just as much as they need Google. Google can be an arrogant bunch at times, and they are a bit green in the ears when it comes to politics. The AP is threatening to sue because aside from legislation, it is one a point of leverage in negotiation.
I was going to say that Slashdot isn't a good example, but even this very story links to at least two major newspapers who I would guess are part of the NAA. What would Slashdot link to if they pulled the plug on aggregation?
Bottom line is, in the digital age how can you keep the people who write the stories that you and I are discussing employed?
Nothing is as easy as it first appears, and if it seems easy, you are probably forgetting something.
Re:Yeah this reader's _____ (Score:1, Insightful)
Yet another slam against FOX News. This seems to happen every day here. Well studies show that FOX is *not* a conservative channel, but in fact lies dead-center in its views (relative to the American population), so it's "balanced" moniker appears to be accurate. As for other channels, they are all liberal-leaning, with NBC being the worst:
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/528635 [thestar.com]
It's been well-known for decades that TV reporters are liberal in their views, so I'm glad FOX exists to provide balanced coverage. Now all we need is a conservative channel (CBN perhaps?), and we'll at last have television that represents all American views - left, center, and right.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This Just In... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about instead of laughing, you think about what he actually means. Instead of thinking "OMG, stupid suits LOL", think "this guy knows more about business and marketing than I do, but doesn't know tech, what does he really mean".
Translation:
And he is right. People who come into a site via Google Search are the "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" kind. They hit the page, and go away. The only way to make money on this kind of traffic is to plaster your stories with advertising in hopes they exit via an ad rather than the back button. Is this what you want?
If you really want to be helpful, you should think about what the person means and help solve that. How can you make inbound Google traffic "sticky"? If you can't how can you maximize your ad revenue from that traffic? Is there a way to do both? Can you offer user-registration and when you visit when you are logged-in, strip out most of the ads (registered users never click on ads)? Can you somehow alter the layout of the page to offer additional content that might lure search engine traffic into reading more than just one page?
Think like a business person, not a nerd. Your president makes perfect sense.
Re:Yeah this reader's _____ (Score:3, Insightful)
Call Their Bluff (Score:3, Insightful)
The newspapers here are obviously being given a choice between:
A) Google aggregates/indexes their content, shows snippets and images and links to them
B) They opt-out using robots.txt or metatags and no longer appear in Google News
What the whiners really want is:
C) Google aggregates/indexes their content, shows snippets and images and links to them AND PAYS THEM
But since they don't want to come right out and say that, they bitch and moan about copyright and monopolies and aliens and whatever else they can think of.
I think this could easily be solved if Google called their bluff. When each entity gets whiny and preachy and targets Google with these types of stories, Google should ask them if they'd like to be removed... Yes or No. If they refuse to choose yes or no, Google dumps them. Within a week, their traffic will drop so much that they'll be begging Google to be back in.
Re:The common argument is wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just wishful thinking to assume that random people will be less biased, although you might be able to argue that they will be biased in different ways ... but that's not the same thing, and it's not necessarily better.
I think this is missing some info. too, both newspapers and movies have had monopolies on production and distribution. And as long as you aren't talking about digital distribution, both still do. The problem is that newspapers have crossed the point where digital distribution is often better and physical distribution, so all they have is the production monopoly ... and they've been canibalizing their production budgets to keep their physical distribution monopolies going.
With TiVO, netflix, PSN and YouTube all trying to push digital distribution of movies/TV we are going to get to the crossing point soon (but, not there yet, IMO) where buying/renting DVDs isn't the "best" distribution anymore. I'd hope/assume the movie studios won't react by firing 90% of their actors/directors/etc. ... but you never know.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:2, Insightful)
Because they don't see google snippets as advertisements (i.e. pushing users to their content), but instead as google using their content.
Google could easily put this into perspective by telling the news corps that it will not aggregate their content (thus shutting off a HUGE pipeline of readers) unless the news corps pay them.
walk away (Score:2, Insightful)
You should take your other colleagues in the online version and just walk away and start your own news company then. Eliminate the upper management skim, more cash for you guys, less headaches. And stay private, don't get involved with outside investors, then you can stay focused.
All these big corporations are so fond of slashing "overhead" by outsourcing or firing good people, screw them, outsource yourself to working for yourself, eliminate that big fat overhead expense of layers of PHBs and short term profits fixated "investors".
Re:Lose readers... how about lose news sources? (Score:3, Insightful)
you'd be more likely (if not all but forced) to visit the front pages of newspaper sites to get your news
Actually, I'm not very likely to do that. If it's not on CNN.COM, Time.com, Newsweek.com or other national/global sites, I'm just as likely to give up. I'm not going to start trolling through paper after paper (each one a walled garden of information) looking for content. I'm even less likely to pay a subscription fee to do so. In other words, I think the argument that 'if people can't use aggregators they'll come to us' is wishful thinking, when the third possibility is that the papers just drop off the radar entirely.
It doesn't help that the place where the papers should have the greatest strength, local news, has been a disappointment for me in the past. When something interesting happens today, I'd like to see it on the local newspaper web site -today-. Rarely happens. Newspapers seem to act as if stories don't need to be on the web until they're actually printed on dead trees first. If I'm lucky it will be posted tomorrow. If I'm not lucky it won't be posted at all since the public site has only a small subset of the newspaper's content. If it is posted eventually, I have the added aggravation of having to hunt it down quickly, because it's going to drop into the 'walled garden' in just a few days.
By the way, the papers might be including aggregators that provide nothing but links in their complaint, but I think their only hope is to focus on the ones like Google News that also provide 'fair use' snippets of the articles. Getting the snippets to stop might be the 'right' outcome anyway. I suspect that some papers -are- losing page views because people read the snippet and decide they've seen enough and don't need to click through. I'm pro fair use but I still want to see content creators survive and get paid.
The newspapers have no chance as far as I am concerned to convince a court that they should be paid just for linking. This is what I meant by 'the genie is out of the bottle'. So yes, I am saying that aggregation of some sort will be legal indefinitely. But I also believe, that if I'm wrong and the papers get their way, they've just killed themselves so much the faster, if my behavior is typical of the public at large.
Re:Yeah this reader's _____ (Score:4, Insightful)
Well studies show that FOX is *not* a conservative channel, but in fact lies dead-center in its views (relative to the American population
Studies also show that the more a person watches FOX news, the more likely they are to believe incorrect facts. The only reason FOX seems "dead center" to you is because Americans are ridiculously right wing. It's not the job of a news organization to reinforce the biases of their audience. They have a responsibility to report things as they are, and not as one wishes to see them.
There really is no left wing media in America. That NBC leaned towards Obama in the last election means nothing, since Obama is center-right by the standards of most of the world. Why do you think he was fighting against increased regulation of our financial industry during the G20 meeting that just happened?
If you want to see some reporting that's actually biased towards the left, watch Democracy NOW!. THAT is the left wing equivalent of Fox News. But it's still more factually accurate than Fox. After all, reality has a well known liberal bias.
Re:Google Lawyer Alexander Macgillivray's Blog (Score:3, Insightful)
The newspapers are missing the point: Google is providing a FREE service, and the newspapers do not have a right to that service. They should be glad Google does not require them to pay a fee for inclusion in their index and for providing summaries to their product (readership) to capture their interest. Advertising usually costs a lot of money, and being an advertising medium themselves, they ought to "get" it.