Times editor backs Google in Belgian case

Posted by Martin Stabe on 11 October 2006 at 12:45
Tags: Google, Journalism, Sunday Times, Times, Times Online

Times editor Robert Thomson has criticised the Belgian court ruling that found Google in breach of Belgium’s French- and German-language newspapers’ copyright, and said that he has no problem with Google News as long as it sends traffic to TimesOnline.

Speaking at Press Gazette’s “Breakfast with the Editor” event yesterday, Thomson said: “My reading in English of some of the judgement suggests that the judge doesn’t really know what the Internet is — or was, or will be. You can’t corral content in the way that that decision implies.”

Thomson went on to outline his view on Google News, the search giant’s news aggregation tool that has occasionally proved controversial in newspaper publishing circles.

“Google News at the moment gives you headlines, and I know they’ve been working on a program that gives you a couple of paragraphs without actually taking you to the web site,” he said, apparently referring to Google’s purchase earlier this year of “Orion”, software that allows a search engine to extract relevant parts of a page directly from within a search engine.

“I have no issue with them as long as they’re directing you to our site and to the wonderful advertisements that you take out on TimesOnline — that is content being rewarded with revenue, and we can all understand that relationship. But if they had two paragraphs of our content or three paragraphs of our content and put contextual ads or display ads against that without driving the traffic to our site, we’d have an issue with that — and I’d probably call that Belgian judge to see if he wouldn’t mind sitting in session over here.”