1:05 pm ET
Apr 7, 2009


Google Responds to AP’s Tougher Stance

    • I'm amazed that it's taken this long for newspapers to come to their senses. It's no wonder they're going under.

    • AP can threaten Google all they want, on the other hand Google could probably just stop linking (read sending customers) to the newspaper web sites. Who wins this war?

    • "As a result, many newspaper publishers want Google to crack open its prodigious wallet — its nearly $16 billion in cash can buy the combined market capitalization of all newspaper companies nearly three times over — and pay licensing or royalty fees directly to the papers whose stories are referenced on Google News."

      Might make sense to just buy the more prestigious newspapers, pushing Google's reach out to the traditional news world even further and bringing in an endless stream of revenue. Google is arguably the company most likely to be able to monetize these brands anyway. They could probably be relatively picky: once they purchased a few in the bigger cities the value of the others would plummet because they'd be able to push high-quality traditional reporting out without copyright restrictions (well, they'd own the copyrights so I suppose it'd be more accurate to say without fear of retribution for violating the copyrights of others). At some point they'd probably also take control of the AP too and just vacate its lawsuit.

    • "I’m amazed that it’s taken this long for newspapers to come to their senses. It’s no wonder they’re going under."

      Google, aggregators, blogger, etc. have had little to zero financial impact on newspapers in regards to this issue. If users are only finding and consuming their content on search engines, aggregators, and micro-publishers those newspapers have a much greater problem than they imagine, especially regarding in-market traffic. Out-of-market audience? Who cares. It is low-value transient audience that local advertisers do not want (media waste) and is too small and fractured for big advertisers to pay a premium cpm... thus the Internet whores, Ad Networks.

    • This is not as outrageous as it's made out to be. The music industry does the same thing through BMI/ASCAP, et al and collects from broadcast and restaurant outlets. Makes perfect sense to me. Google's free ride needs to end somewhere.

    • newspapers don't have any chance - there's no ad network which can pay more than google and if they want to survive they'll accept this

    • Newspapers have done this to themselves; this is not Googles fault. Running a business that is ostensibly "news" but is in reality politics illustrates that newspapers didn't understand the business they were in.

      Why alienate half of your audience from the get-go? Another confusion most newspapers have is differentiating the editorial page from the overall selection of articles making it into print. Anybody who says the New York Times or Boston Globe don't suffer from this malady are either high liberals or are more than likely working for one of the papers.

      No. Newspapers made their own bed when they decided they were not a business and had higher (lower?) aspirations. Their activism and de-emphasis of true professionalism sealed their fate long ago. Do they expect customers to buy their rags when they do nothing but insult their intelligence?

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