10 ms·

The issue is a different one. Google does not demand access to news portals, the publishers grant it. If they would not like to appear in the google search, a s

The issue is a different one. Google does not demand access to news portals, the publishers grant it. If they would not like to appear in the google search, a single entry in the robots.txt would take care of that. However, since google does send them a lot of traffic, publishers actually want to appear as far up in the listing as possible and spend ridiculous amounts of money on SEO. However, now that newspaper publishers have problems monetizing, they turn to the state, point to google and cry "they are making money with our content, we want a share." while forgetting that google provides a service of its own: Google does compile and serve the index, and for that, they take money. They do not serve newspaper pages to the reader or create content. I have no special feelings for google, but making a law that requires search engine providers to strike a separate contract with any publishing entity whose contents they want to list would hardly be beneficial to any side. It's just that most german publishing houses are too blind to see. They're like a wounded elephant in a porcelain store: Unable to clearly see what damage they're causing to the surrounding world.

fijal 14y ago
It's not completely true. Google news does host all the content for some pages (I have no idea if they have the agreement or not). This might depend on the country though as I can't see anything right now that looks like that.
- Xylakant 14y ago
  Not in germany. German google news only hosts the first sentences, looks like the cutoff is at about 250 characters. And the proposed law is not about google news, but about google search.
- chc 14y ago
  When Google News hosts the entire article, that's because they've worked out a deal. No deal, you get a link. (Or at least that's how it worked last time I looked into it.)
jacquesm 14y ago
"they are making money with our content, we want a share." And rightly so. Google controls the way people surf the web, as a monopolist they will be hit with regulation like this more frequently. The homepage of those newspapers used to be the main avenue to get to the content rather than search. Please note that I'm against such legislation, I just feel that Google is operating on a principle of asymmetry and uses its monopoly position to control an ever larger amount of the content on the web and access to that content without wanting to reciprocate by releasing their own content in a similar manner. Until they do I think they don't deserve our pity or support. It's all take and very little give. I can't fault them for doing that as long as they can get away with it but they really don't deserve to harness public opinion against the legislators that attempt to reduce the strength of the monopoly position.
- Xylakant 14y ago
  > And rightly so Wrong: Google (or Bing or Duckduckgo) is not making money off their content. Google is making money off the index they compile, of the service they offer above and beyond what the publishing houses offer. Nobody wants to go to each newspaper page and see what they write about a specific topic. Now, the publishing houses could agree and build their own index, shut google out and be done with it. They'd even have a much better starting point to do so since they have vastly more information about the content they server. But they don't. Quite to the contrary, they try to shut down services that provide such a service (Perlentaucher springs to my mind here). It's not about pity and support for google either. There is a monopoly on the other side as well: Most publishing houses are pro this legislation, so you read very little against the proposed law in major publications. It's good that a corporate player now takes up the flag to counterbalance for that - even if it's google. The proposed law is poorly worded and poorly targeted, it will endanger bloggers who cite from newspaper publications, even linking the headline on facebook may open you up to a lawsuit. It would practically require all bloggers to go back through their blogs and strike all mention of newspaper articles from past articles. So even if I could somehow accept that the publishing houses should be awarded some of googles earnings - in this case I'd have to join their flag. But if you can't rally behind a good cause just because "google deserves a slap on it head", then rally behind IGEL [1] which is the (bloggers) initiative against the proposed law. [1] http://leistungsschutzrecht.info/ http://leistungsschutzrecht.info/

fijal 14y ago

It's not completely true. Google news does host all the content for some pages (I have no idea if they have the agreement or not). This might depend on the country though as I can't see anything right now that looks like that.

Xylakant 14y ago
Not in germany. German google news only hosts the first sentences, looks like the cutoff is at about 250 characters. And the proposed law is not about google news, but about google search.
chc 14y ago
When Google News hosts the entire article, that's because they've worked out a deal. No deal, you get a link. (Or at least that's how it worked last time I looked into it.)

jacquesm 14y ago

"they are making money with our content, we want a share." And rightly so. Google controls the way people surf the web, as a monopolist they will be hit with regulation like this more frequently. The homepage of those newspapers used to be the main avenue to get to the content rather than search. Please note that I'm against such legislation, I just feel that Google is operating on a principle of asymmetry and uses its monopoly position to control an ever larger amount of the content on the web and access to that content without wanting to reciprocate by releasing their own content in a similar manner. Until they do I think they don't deserve our pity or support. It's all take and very little give. I can't fault them for doing that as long as they can get away with it but they really don't deserve to harness public opinion against the legislators that attempt to reduce the strength of the monopoly position.

Xylakant 14y ago
> And rightly so Wrong: Google (or Bing or Duckduckgo) is not making money off their content. Google is making money off the index they compile, of the service they offer above and beyond what the publishing houses offer. Nobody wants to go to each newspaper page and see what they write about a specific topic. Now, the publishing houses could agree and build their own index, shut google out and be done with it. They'd even have a much better starting point to do so since they have vastly more information about the content they server. But they don't. Quite to the contrary, they try to shut down services that provide such a service (Perlentaucher springs to my mind here). It's not about pity and support for google either. There is a monopoly on the other side as well: Most publishing houses are pro this legislation, so you read very little against the proposed law in major publications. It's good that a corporate player now takes up the flag to counterbalance for that - even if it's google. The proposed law is poorly worded and poorly targeted, it will endanger bloggers who cite from newspaper publications, even linking the headline on facebook may open you up to a lawsuit. It would practically require all bloggers to go back through their blogs and strike all mention of newspaper articles from past articles. So even if I could somehow accept that the publishing houses should be awarded some of googles earnings - in this case I'd have to join their flag. But if you can't rally behind a good cause just because "google deserves a slap on it head", then rally behind IGEL [1] which is the (bloggers) initiative against the proposed law. [1] http://leistungsschutzrecht.info/ http://leistungsschutzrecht.info/