Newspapers Face the Prisoner's Dilemma With Google 290
Hugh Pickens writes "Nicholas Carr has an interesting analysis of Rupert Murdoch's threat to de-list News Corp's stories from Google and Microsoft's eager offer to make Bing Murdoch's exclusive search engine for its content. Carr writes that newspapers are caught in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma with Google because Google's search engine 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.' If any single newspaper opts out of Google, their competitors will pick up the traffic they lose. There is only one way that newspapers can break out of the prison — if a critical mass of newspapers opt out of Google's search engine simultaneously, they would suddenly gain substantial market power. Murdoch may have been signaling to other newspapers that 'we'll opt out if you'll opt out,' positioning himself as the would-be ringleader of a massive jailbreak, without actually risking a jailbreak himself. There are signs that Murdoch's signal is working, with reports that the publishers of the Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are now also considering blocking Google. In the meantime, Steve Ballmer is more than happy to play along with Murdoch because although a deal with News Corps would reduce the basic profitability of Microsoft's search business, it would inflict far more damage on Google than on Microsoft."
Inflict Damage? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Losing links to the various News Corp sites will "inflict damage" on Google's business?
Really?
I for one would welcome... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I Don't See the Comparison, More Like MLB Strik (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Google will care in the slightest if all the newspapers removed themselves from its index. There are still plenty of online only news sites, specialist media sites and so on that Google can point to. If people know they want to read one of Rupert Murdoch's offerings, they would go there direct, not via Google, and most Google customers aren't going to go to Yahoo or Bing to compare the search results they get.
Relevancy (Score:5, Interesting)
So even if Google doesn't index, say, the Wall Street Journal, can't Google still get the same news contributions form the AP newswire?
Or is there something special about AP license terms or something?
Re:Last gasp of the newspaper (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the key issue, "few people want to use them for news". The way for newspapers to survive is to stop trying to provide up-to-the-minute news and concentrate on in-depth, reliable reporting. Newspapers are idea for covering local issues that do not get the attention of big media. They are also ideal for sports news and providing a forum for informed debate. The big strength of a newspaper is that there is a gate-keeper to prevent rubbish from being published. If newspapers can take advantage of that they can not only survive, but prosper. If newspapers simply try to out-internet the internet they are doomed.
Maybe I am dumb... (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't let the door... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NPR, BBC anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, the WSJ editorial pages are propaganda tools, so I assume you mean the news and analysis pages. As far as those go, I have come across people who will name drop it during discussions, but I work in finance, and these are probably people who decided early on they were going into finance and read it religiously since 4th grade or something. Anyhow, they are a minority of the people I know. In general however, nobody goes around quoting WSJ, if they can quote the BBC ad (although less so), NPR. I know NPR is affected by cutbacks, and is quite shoddy compared to the BBC; but to say that the WSJ has more credibility than the BBC? Not in my world. Do they even have correspondents in 25% of the places the BBC does? Do people in far off countries gather around a radio and tune in to the WSJ?
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
Newspapers have several issues to deal with.
1. Craigslist is killing them. Classified ads had to be a huge income stream. I know that just a single help wanted ad in my market was well over $100 and we are not a big market.
2. Costs. They are expensive to print and deliver.
I have not gotten the paper in years. At best they are worth it for the coupons but a web based or even better yet a mobile based way to get them would be much better. Plus my local supermarkets are now using direct mail to send those to me.
I hate the format of a paper. It is too big to be easy to read. The pages are huge and most of it I just don't care about.
The one thing I have to say that I miss is local news but I get that from a website now.
Now here is what I wonder. How much news comes through Google? I tend to just go to CNN.com or tcpalm.com to get my news. I almost never search for news. I doubt that I will head to Bing anytime soon so yes I think this is all going to be a disaster. Will Microsoft be willing to pay everybody to jump to Bing? And will a few hold outs make some big money being the news source on Google and also being on Bing?
Seems to me that is the risk they news services that do this run.
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
Our company is making a significant investment in tracking these online ads and not for nothing.
P.S. If you shop at a large grocery chain its about 1 million dollars that changes hands each week for the items in ad.
What Dilamma? (Score:1, Interesting)
There's no dilemma here! There's only dinosaur newspaper management who mistake Google as an enemy. Why would google be an enemy? What basis is there for the quote that it 'prevents them from making decent money online — by massively fragmenting traffic, by undermining brand power, and by turning news stories into fungible commodities.'
1) What money? What does Google do that prevents them from making money? List other possible sources of news? That's like saying the yellow pages prevent you from making decent money because it lists competitors that might be cheaper
2) Undermining brand power? If your brand is preserved by the fact that customers don't know the value of the competitors products, you're doing something wrong. Isn't brand power based on a quality product and service? I don't see how Google linking to you or others has anything to do with that.
3) Fungible commodities? See 1 and 2, but besides that, welcome to the world of the 21st century. We've got the internet now, and copying is punished here. Back when people had no choice, they read their favorite paper to get the news. News was a fungible commodity back then as well, but there was no sense in buying multiple papers. The internet just helped people realize how fungible news really is. If you want people to come back to your site, you have to have your own style, your own news, something that differentiates from all the other papers.
Newspapers "grew up" in a time when they had to be alike to be read. They all had to report on everything in order to compete, otherwise people would buy another paper which had "more" news. They made themselves "fungible". If you look around on the internet, there are lots of sites/blogs reporting news from really small "niches". Think of a sport, hobby or interest, and you'll be bound to find (using Google!) a website reporting exclusively on that subject. Yet despite their niche appeal these sites thrive and flourish, and the bigger blogs even generate nice profits for the owners. Why? Because they're unique, either in style or in content. Newspapers should learn from that, instead of misguidedly bashing Google.
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the fastest growing Dutch news papers is directly aimed at 25-35 year old men who get most of their news online. I love it. It's a format that works well.
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just left a newspaper because all they were doing was repeatedly laying people off and giving out paycut after paycut. They talked about how they were doing better than most newspapers in the country, and yet revenue kept dropping more and more each quarter.
I know that some newspapers faced bankruptcy for other reasons (The Chicago Tribune Company's equity was mortgaged for bad real estate deals) but we kept hearing about paper after paper going into bankruptcy.
I've seen several magazines stop printing as well. Wired (fantastic magazine that every ./er should subscribe to) talks about how even they are struggling a bit these days.
Where exactly do you get the idea that print media is doing well?
Re:Google already licenses the AP feeds (Score:3, Interesting)
Google paid AP because it represented an end-run around the newspapers. It was a shot across their bow, a statement that they could be made irrelevant. As has been said elsewhere, the majority of content in these papers comes from AP... and damned near the rest comes from Reuters — which Google also indexes. Ultimately, the papers derive the greatest benefit from providing google index access to articles, and then making them subscriber-only after a week or so, like several do already. To block google from carrying any of the text would/will be pure folly. The masses will not pay for news articles, and google is not going to pay for them either.
I pray that a huge number of these jackasses try to pressure google. It will be more than pleasurable to watch them fail.