Google News is like a newstand
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 28 April 2006 at 10:55
Tags: Agence France Presse, Google, Journalism, Newspapers, Yahoo
Ryan Blethen, a columnist with the Seattle Times, repeats a charge against the big search engines that is surprisingly common among newspaper people:
Essentially, Google News is hijacking news with no compensation to newspapers. The search engines then get credit for the entire news-gathering and presentation process. A lot of online news reader say they get their news from Google or Yahoo! — even though all those sites do is use a program that grabs the news off newspaper Web sites.
This is also the view of the World Association of Newspapers, and several major news organisations. It was a position repeated by WAN MD Ali Rahnema the Online Publishers’ Association confab in London last month. Some have gone even further: A year ago, Agence France Presse even sued Google over copyright violations, which has lead to the removal of copy from the search engine’s results.
The mistake these publishers are making is to think that Google News is behaving like a competing newspaper that is lifting their content. Google is not entirely blameless for this misperception: The developer of Google News, Krishna Bharat, has used this analogy himself, describing his creation as “a computer-generated newspaper that unifies news from online newspapers worldwide with an emphasis on diversity and balance.”
But Google News isn’t a newspaper; it’s a newstand.
Online, few people read only a single news source; they read news and views promiscuously, often seeking multiple accounts on a single event. Online users don’t go to a single front page and only read one newspaper’s accounts of world events. Newspapers are becoming “unbundled” so that the competitive unit of analysis is the story, not the newspaper as a whole.
In these changed conditions, opposing Google News is like opposing newstands — for Google is the Internet’s equivalent of a newstand. It’s where consumers go to scan the options on offer and pick the most appealing source for the information they require.
In competitive newpaper markets where revenue depends on newstand sales, newspapers tailor their headlines and front pages to appeal to casual readers walking past newstands. Nobody would make a fuss if passers-by dared get their news by scanning the headlines at their corner shop without buying a paper.
Once we start thinking of Google as a newstand rather than a competing newspaper, the solution is simple: Adapt to writing headlines that encourage Google users to click through to the full story on your site — rather than your competitors’.
There is some anecdotal evidence that some news organisations are starting to think about attracting Googlers the same way. Search engine opimization in online headers is the online equivalent of the witty 72-point splash on dead trees.
To lump Yahoo! in this argument makes even less sense. Unlike Google, Yahoo! sources its news content under licence from traditional news organisations — and even produces some of its own journalism, in the form of Kevin Sites. If you don’t want Yahoo! to compete with your site for eyeballs, the solution is simple: Don’t licence your stories to them.
Tags: Agence France Presse, Google, Journalism, Newspapers, Yahoo
