@Society of Editors: Andrew Neil: ‘Time to talk to Google’

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 November 2006 at 21:20
Tags: Google, Journalism, Society of Editors

The recurring debate about Google’s relationship with news publishers is set to be one of the major talking points of the Society of Editors conference in Glasgow.

During his introductory speech this evening, Andrew Neil argued that the time for giving content to Google for. He didn’t prescribe any particular solution, but said that it was at least time to start talking to the search engine — about revenue sharing or perhaps to get Google’s help in improving the online business model.

Roy Greenslade immediately rose to question this stance and to play Google’s advocate. We’ll get to see this debate for real in the next two days, when one of the speakers here will be Nathan Stoll of Google News.

Haven’t we been through this before?

Well, no. Neil’s arguement is more sophisticated than most aggregator critics’. If news is a mere commodity, he argues, few publishers will have an incentive to take the sometimes grave risks necessary to report it. This could be interesting.

Update: Here’s my transcript of what Neil said about Google.

After pointing out that online advertising still accounted for a smaller percentage of media spending than consumers’ media use, Neil predicted that this meant that online advertising still has plenty of opportunity for growth:

Advertisers are not stupid. Over time, and sooner than you think, the ad revenues will follow the eyeballs. And if these revenues do not end up on our sites, because we have not attracted the readers to our online journalism, then we will have only ourselves to blame.

And the potential is huge. As it was announced last week, Google, who now have more advertising revenue that ITV [Channel 4, he must have meant], probably the biggest source of ad revenues. And yet we allow other people to take ad revenue that should be ours. Did it not make us think,  when Google purchased YouTube, that the first thing it had to do was begin negotiations with the major broadcasters  in order to avoid copyright problems in case it had huge lawsuits — and as a result will now be paying the broadcasters for what is now on YouTube.

And yet we allow Google to take our content day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute in which they billions of advertising dollars and we do not charge them a penny for our hard-earned journalism. It is time, I would suggest, for conversation with Google. They’ve the money; they can afford it.

Tags: Google, Journalism, Society of Editors