The Google News Dilemma 310
(54)T-Dub writes "Wired has an interesting article about the status of news.google.com. It has been 3 years since its release and the major bugs have long since been ironed out, so why is it still in beta? Apparently, it's because Google hasn't been able to figure out how to make money off of it. Slapping up some Google Adwords seems like the obvious solution. The problem is that Google News has multi-million-dollar news publishers scared because of the incredibly low-cost method that Google has employed to bring us 'up the minute news.' Currently they are able to scrape the content of news sites under fair use because they are not using it for commercial purposes. Once they move away from the nonprofit, educational purposes of their system they can expect to be deluged by cease and desist orders. Before you break out the tissue box though, remember that google sent their own cease and desist orders to a Google News RSS feeder a few months back."
I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Google web-scrapes the latest news (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, but one guy said something warm and fuzzy once about "do no harm" so they're a Good(tm) giant, soulless corporation, like Apple or IBM.
Oh, and thanks for GMail. ABSOLUTE GENIOUS. I was searching high and low for a way to introduce more advertisements into my e-mail, and Google delivered.
Re:Bad Grammar...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Their return is in the branding (Score:5, Insightful)
The financial return from the news portion doesn't have to come in dollars. It can simply come from "good will" and "brand value." Those are items that show up on the balance sheet too.
[rumor]Perhaps google will buy out a news entity in the future[/started]
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
LS
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
One major bug still exists -- the bot cannot separate news from opinion and other trash. It's a sloppy orgy of miscellaneous content that should somehow be more carefully organized before being released.
Neither can CBS, FOX, CNN, NPR
Still in beta because... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that I reread this, it's gonna get modded down... oh well.
Don't underestimate Google... (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously there is a plan here, and it is very simple. Google are simply going to let the service run as beta, until it has enough users (and it is getting there) that the shoe is on the other foot: and the news providers will WANT to be screen scraped.
I mean, when news pages start seeing that 90% of their article reads are referred from news.google.com, or that do reader research and find that Google News is the number one way that people learn to read their site, then Google can start gladly removing anybody who asks. I have started reading several newssites regularly that I first found via Google News.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it...
1) Google isn't copying the full-text of an article. At most, its the headline and a paragraph...most of the time it is the headline and a sentence.
2) Since Google doesn't post the entire article, you have to click a link that takes you directly to the publisher of the article. Google News is therefor generating millions of direct hits per month to various news sites.
3) These millions of direct hits to these news sites means more advertising dollars for THOSE sites. Since I click link on a NYT Headline listed on Google News, I view *gasp* the NYT web site and its particular article. Which means, any ad dollars I generate there go to the NYT. The horror, the NYT is making more money thanks to Google News then without it (not to mention spreading its name out to more readers, who could purchase even subscriptions).
So am I missing something? Why would news publishers have issues with a site sending millions of hits per month at the news publisher's sites, generating far more money then if Google News didn't exist.
Re:Bad Grammar...? (Score:2, Insightful)
Additional forms of wordplay might include pattern repetition. An example might be "Lloyd's Lloses Llamas" as a headline if Lloyds of London had to settle a claim to a llama farmer.
If it's in print, it's not how it sounds, but how it looks.
Can be a loss leader (Score:4, Insightful)
Google News is still valuable to Google, even if they cannot make money off it.
It is a free service provided for the public that give Google great publicity and a positive image. It does build their brand.
So, even if you consider it as a loss leader in marketingspeak, it is still valuable to them.
Now, as an alternate strategy, if they start providing ads for the news outlets themselves? Would the news outlets complain then?
Re:Bad Grammar...? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Google News Better Not Make Money" or else they'll be sued because it will have become commercial use, see?
Re:I disagree (Score:0, Insightful)
Why not adwords from the news sources? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Err, wait, acutally, now that I look, I can't find any (opinion) tags anywhere on Google News today, even in searches for editorials. The (press release) tags still show up but not the (opinion)s. Hmm, maybe it's considered still in beta because they're still experimenting with changing features on a daily basis?
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule of Humanity #1: Most people are horribly, horribly stupid.
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as most people can separate opinion from "the news", I'll start complaining about not having a bot that can do it. Until then, news.google.com is doing pretty damn well (It's the homepage on most of the computers I use).
inversion of control (Score:3, Insightful)
Small/niche/local sites can subscribe and get more traffic thrown their way. Big news sites may eventually follow.
FROOGLE TOO?? (Score:2, Insightful)
I noticed Froogle has been in "beta" for almost as long... yet I use is extensively and find it works better than most all the other price comparison engines.
Dang... I wish everyone had betas so good they were basically production quality. ;)
Re:AdWords may not be good enough (Score:3, Insightful)
News aggregation is the way the whole market is going. Nielson//NetRatings has shown that sites like Yahoo! News and others are now ahead of the news sites in popularity.
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/001562.php
I work for a company, Moreover Technologies, that has been in the online news aggregation business since 1998. As mentioned in the previous thread, the publishers love us because we offer more distribution for their content. We simply then redirect clicks back to their pages and they are able to realize the monetization from their site. They could shut us down, but why? It all a distribution game, more is always better.
In the online web portal world MSN News bot does this. Yahoo! does this. So why can't Google? I think the answer really is that Google is too busy on other areas that make more money. Search monetization is far more lucrative than news.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine if there was some service that told everyone what the best cell phone deal was at any given moment (pedantry: for your particular calling needs. just an example.) All the cell companies but one would be unhappy with it
Re:AdWords may not be good enough (Score:1, Insightful)
They sell ads to people. That, by definition, is "selling out". I don't see what the problem is. Google slurps content and tries to guess what will generate the most clicks, so they can make the most money. If that means only showing Ford ads for positive articles about Ford, well, that's pretty much standard in most magazines these days.
Who told you they don't make money from that...? (Score:5, Insightful)
--
Try Nuggets [mynuggets.net], the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.
Fair use and the *current* site (Score:4, Insightful)
Adding advertising might cause the site to push the site's whose content they are linking to over the edge, but I don't really see how one can even argue that there's a fundamental difference.
Likewise, there's not a fundamental difference between Google News and the main Google search site, which _does_ have paid advertising.
And in both cases, sites which _wouldn't_ want to be indexed seem pretty silly. If you don't want people to find your web site, okay, keep it out of the search engines. Or save your money and don't put it on the web at all. This isn't a matter of fair use doctrine -- it's common sense.
Re:This has been known on Slashdot for some time. (Score:2, Insightful)
The odd entanglement of the modern world is that what Google *does* make money on are the "loss leaders" of others.
Re:I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
that's not necessarily a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
And you are correct: There are no facts. Everything is subject to human interpretation (unless you are somehow one with the universe and are aware of some facts without them being filtered through your or someone elses brain first).
I understand your point that the intent of the item determines whether it is news (providing "facts" vs. explicit "opinions"). The problem is that the intent doesn't change the actual content. Watch Fox News for instance - opinion pieces are passed off as news items daily. Virtually every major news entity is backed by a large corporation which filters and adjusts its reporting to align with its interests. The viewer may see something that looks like a news report, but in fact is an ad, an opinion piece, or a suggestion that adjusts the viewer's perspective.
Even a formally journalist trained with no axe to grind (say he's writing for a time capsule) can't help to be biased - he can only report what is available to his senses and can be communicated with his language - and we all know how language contains MANY inherent biases.
LS
Re:None of that shows up on a balance sheet (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at what most commercials are selling nowadays, how often is the commercial actually on the product? Heck you see computer commercials that are based more on the company image than the computer! People are becoming more and more suspicious of corporations and that affects the bottom line, heck if Microsoft or Nike had kept my Good Will they might both have a few hundred more of my dollars and they know it. Why do you think America's Army [americasarmy.com] exists? They spent what, $10 million getting it made and who knows how much more on maintainance and bandwidth. That's all for good will, get more recruits, more public support because people are now associating the army with this fun free game.
Now google has a service, that tons of people use daily, that is free, high quality, and extrememly useful without getting any real bad will. How many commercials, heck how many sponserships could say that? I don't doubt there's a good pile of companies who would love to spend a big pile of money buying Goole News, keeping it the same, and just renaming it "[Company Name] News" and google or their stockholders would be foolish to want it cancelled.