Newspapers’ ‘frenemy’ Google, the debate continues

Posted by Martin Stabe on 10 April 2007 at 14:31
Tags: Agence France Presse, Chicago Tribune, Google, Google News, Los Angeles Times, Tribune Company

Google maybe making peace with the wires, but America’s latest newspaper mogul is not a fan. The new owner of Tribune newspapers, Chicago property magnate Sam Zell, reignited the old Google-as-kleptomaniac topos when he told students at Stanford University:

“We have a situation today where effectively the content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, etcetera.”

He later added: “If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?” Not very.”

As is the done thing is such cases, a swarm of bloggers promptly painted Zell as a publishing a N00b who doesn’t get it — a publishing neophyte with a limited grasp of the unquestionable truths of online economics, in other words.

“Either Zell is trying to be deliberately provocative, or he’s a complete ignoramus,” fumed Mathew Ingram of the Toronto Globe and Mail, who is always a sure bet for a strongly-worded quote in this debate.

Ingram pointed out that Google isn’t exactly as dependent on newspapers as some journalists would like to believe: “Even if all the newspaper content from all the major newspapers were removed from the search engine, Google would no doubt still be happily making billions of dollars.”

Jason Calacanis, meanwhile, predicted that Zell would “lose billions” and insisted that “Google is not the problem with newspapers–Google is part of solution”. Newspapers’ real problems, Calaacanis suggested, are due to their:

Huge overheads
“Legions of legions overpaid middle and upper management”
“slow pace of innovation”
“inability of newspapers to sell online advertising when compared to web companies”
inability “to evolve their one-way medium into a two way medium which draws in a new generation which craves interaction and debate”
“inability of newspapers to compete with Craigslist”.

Doc Searls, Rex Hammock, Frank Gruber and many others also piled on, making similar points.

It’s hard to argue with much of what they say. I’ve argued that Google News is like a newsstand, not a competing paper. But this a far from perfect analogy, and this weekend’s debate highlights that a lot of nuance needs to be injected into this debate.

And unusually, there were also a significant number of dissenting voices at least tentatively supporting Zell.

ZDnet’s Donna Bogatin was bemused by the blogosphere’s unanimity on this issue, and pointed out that Google does use newspaper content in results from its ad-supported main search engine.

Urblogger Dave Winer, meanwhile, says Zell’s inaccuracy in conflating Google with the Internet might just conceal a more fundamental insight in his argument. Addressing fellow bloggers, Winer writes: “maybe we’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re not writing for Google”. That provoked a more conciliatory reply from Searls, who had included the crosshead “Earth to Zell” his initial post:

Here’s another one. Let’s try to understand what newspapers and their professionals are actually going through here. It’s complex, difficult and important. I’m going to say something else that may put me at odds with some blogging colleagues: Newspapers are an endangered institutional species that it is critically important to save, and to improve. To do that we need AND logic, not OR. In blogging alone we have neither the practices nor the cultures required to replace newspapers or any other established media institutions.

Florida journalist Lucas Grindley also sees some merit in Zell’s argument. Grindley also says that Google News is more monetised than often released. First, it improves Google’s branding as a reliable first source of news — in place of newspapers. He also argues that Google’s opt-out view of copyright is legally dubious, since opt-in (however impractical online) is the more common understanding of the requirement for fair use.

It’s clear that Google and Google News continues to raise some important issues for newspapers, and that the question of whether or not Google is friend or enemy isn’t as obvious as it seems to many bloggers.