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Google Businesses The Internet Government The Courts News

Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News 403

Posted by samzenpus from the news-du-jour dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google has began removing web-based content of Paris-Based news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), from the Google News service. This past weekend we reported that the Agence France Presse had sued Google for displaying their photo's, stories, and news headlines on Google News without permission. AFP is seeking damages of around $17.5 million and requested the courts that Google News is not to display any of its copyrighted material. It appears Google is complying with what the AFP is requesting. Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter, said Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman."
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Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News More

Google Begins Removing AFP From Google News

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  • make your mind up (Score:5, Funny)

    by drxray ( 839725 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:04PM (#12031484) Homepage
    AFP or APF or FP?

  • Good move (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:05PM (#12031488)
    Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?

    • Re:Good move (Score:5, Funny)

      by anonicon ( 215837 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:12PM (#12031555)
      You kids today, with your online THIS and convergence THAT, you don't know how good you've got it. Back in my day, we hiked six miles through the trees and snow and mud to our mailbox, and we were grateful! We also had to pay for the damn thing, $0.10 a day, whether we got it or not because our thieving neighbors stole it from off our fenceline, and most of the time there was a little news and whole lot of ads.

      Ungrateful slackers, the lot of you.

      • Re:Good move (Score:5, Funny)

        by secolactico ( 519805 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:25PM (#12031660) Journal
        we hiked six miles through the trees and snow and mud to our mailbox, and we were grateful!

        You forgot: "uphill both ways"

        • Re:Good move (Score:3, Interesting)

          by emilymildew ( 646109 )
          My commute to work right now -is- uphill both ways. I told my father about it, and he asked how that was possible.

          Uh. I have to go up a hill to get there, and then back down the other side?

          My kids are never going to believe me.
      • That's nothin'! At least you had paper! Back in my day, we had to carve into stone tablets if we wanted to write something down. We had to carve rocks just to carve into rocks! You kids and your email and your gmail and your paper mail... In my day, if we wanted to send someone a message we had to train Carrier Pterodactyls. You have no idea how rough it was... they had to pick up our messages and drop them at the right cave. Do you have any idea how many of us were killed just as a result of Pteroda
    • from the news organizations?

      if riaa starts to sue where do we get our music?????

    • Re:Good move (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Maestro4k ( 707634 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:18PM (#12031602) Journal
      Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?
      • From the news organizations that realize being listed on Google News or other news aggregators (such as Topix.net) is beneficial to them because it directs users to their websites.

      • The ones who don't get this concept will just quietly go under or be bought up by other news organizations that "get it". This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.

        Looks like this will be one of those cases where the company deserves exactly what it's asking for. I wonder how they'll try to spin their declining web readership?

      • Look, get the story right, dammit. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        This is exceptionally silly on AFP's part since once a user clicks on a link from Google News to go to AFP's site they can display banner ads to help pay their costs.

        AFP's business model isn't to run a service to deliver news to readers directly. What they do is sell content to news organizations. This means that if you run a newspaper, you pay AFP for the right to reprint their stories.

        Google is getting the AFP content from these newspapers as a third party, and not as a subscriber to AFP, who probab

        • You, as an individual who reads the news, are not their customer.

          Individuals who read the news are not the customers of any news outlet. This is a fundamental mistake. Individuals who read the news are the product, sold to the advertisers who are the actual customer.

          News outlets exist to bring eyeballs to advertisers at a profit, no different from any other form of for-profit media.

      • Re:Good move (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DoctorHibbert ( 610548 )
        Dude, they're French. They care not about readership, they are heavily subsidized by the French gonvernment.

      • Re:Good move (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @11:30PM (#12032471)
        From the news organizations that realize being listed on Google News or other news aggregators (such as Topix.net) is beneficial to them because it directs users to their websites.

        AFP doesn't want users directed to their website. Their business model is damaged by direct customer interaction: they want users directed to the websites of newspapers who reproduce their stories, and that won't happen if viewers can see the original source indexed alongside all the paying clones.

        Who will decide to go read more ads and intrusive branding, when you can get the original just as easily?

        • Re:Good move (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mbaciarello ( 800433 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @01:32AM (#12033133)

          Yes, yes... Yet, I can't see their point.

          1. AFP is hurt in its sales because Google lets end-users get their news for free, so that they don't flock any longer to sites which buy news from AFP. I can see how going up against Google may be useful there, yet wouldn't it be faster and more effective to "secure" your own site? i.e.requiring registration etc...

          2. AFP is hurt by other commercial sites getting and reproducing AFP news for free, and displaying them. Alright, teach'em a lesson by suing Google. Then again, I've never heard a news agency having these kinds of problems, as there are usually many value-added services clients get when they subscribe to services - such as actual "real time" news feeds.

          3. At least according to Wikipedia, AFP is a government-subsidized news agency whose most important market is an artificial one -- i.e. France, where it's the "official" agency. Why go after Google like you were a real company, aggressively protecting your fictitious market?

          It seems to me as though they're looking for additional funding for fiscal 2005, more than protecting a supposed market... After all we all have national budget problems in the EU (and not only there...)

    • Bathroom stalls. Everything I needed to know, I learned while taking a dump in public school...

    • Re:Good move (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SeventyBang ( 858415 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:37PM (#12031738)
      Not every source will do so unless they want $$$ for people to read their online material. Some are doing that right now. see: Wall Street Journal. Sure, there's a free story here & there, but they want to restrict content to subscribers.

      Papers which have less than the WSJ's stature pretty much know they are leaping from shrinking pond to shrinking pond. Paid readership is dropping....fast. And they don't have a solution. They know they have to have an online presence in order to compete against everyone else who knows they need to be online. And if they aren't online, most people aren't going to follow that newspaper.
      The bottom line is those (readers) who are online will read online - in many cases moreso than hardcopy; especially if it's free. Those who aren't wired aren't in a number big enough to keep the paper in business across the long haul.

      I have a silly question:
      what are "photo's"? (see main /. story)

    • Re:Good move (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 )
      Thinking it over, Google is quite definitely copying some of their content, so any organisation on google news can C&D google for this. Still, any news organisation that makes money from website hits would be stupid to do so, as Google is probably one of their biggest referrers.
    • Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?

      You'll get it from the newspaper I work for, which *loves* the traffic we get from google news.
    • Where shall we get our news from? Not AFP from France, that's for sure.

    • Re:Good move (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fbg111 ( 529550 )
      Where shall we get our news from?

      Obviously from the clued-in news services who realize that staying with Google means more viewers directed to their sites, thus more ad revenues, especially when all their competition are willfully removing themselves from the game. Watch the free market work.

      On another note, anyone want to wager on how long it will be till AFP quietly allows their content to be reinserted into Google search results?
    • WikiNews? [wikinews.org]

  • Just to be safe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:05PM (#12031490) Homepage Journal
    Just to be safe, Google should remove all AFP sites not only from news, but from all portions of Google. Google certainly wouldn't want to risk further harm to AFP by keeping them in any of their indexes.

    • Re:Just to be safe (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Stop Error ( 823742 )
      I was just going to say that. Why are they suing Google who is giveing them more exposure and potentially widening there audience?

      • Re:Just to be safe (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:24PM (#12031649) Homepage Journal
        why? because they're a news organization. they get money from selling the stories(and associated photos), not from giving them away for free so that another organization can get the ad revenue as well without paying them anything.

        i'm pretty sure they would have happily sold the stuff to google under normal terms...
        • why? because they're a news organization. they get money from selling the stories(and associated photos), not from giving them away for free so that another organization can get the ad revenue as well without paying them anything. Excuse me? Google News is a free service, with no ads whatsoever. As others have pointed out, the only ones to lose revenue from this will be the AFP.

    • Google should apologise. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Neoncow ( 802085 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:17PM (#12031592) Journal
      Maybe something like,
      We are very very sorry for linking to you from our side of the interweb. Rest assured, Google.com will never link to your site again.

      Have a nice day.
  • Congress passed a law... it is now referred to as the Agence FREEDOM Presse... Please update the submission.

  • Featured on Google a bad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bryan8m ( 863211 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:06PM (#12031506)
    I would think that the news agency would want to be featured on Google to attract more visitors to its site! Apparently they are simply out for money when no damage has actually been done. Sure it's copyrighted material...
    • I would think that the news agency would want to be featured on Google to attract more visitors to its site! Apparently they are simply out for money when no damage has actually been done. Sure it's copyrighted material...

      The words are copyrighted. The news isn't. AFP might want to recognize this if they'd like to continue to compete in the modern world.

      Being the "oldest" news organization in the world can be a hindrance if you fail to recognize that you're no longer [reuters.com] the only one [bloomberg.com] in existence [upi.com].

      Getting

  • Sucks for AFP (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PxM ( 855264 )
    I think this is a case of a dinosaur making last ditch efforts to try to save themself from certain destruction. AFP wants to try to control the flow of news (from them to other newspapers) and defend the natural monopolies involved with physical media since it's hard for customers to compare items for free. Now that AFP isn't listed, customers will just see other sites and flock to them first. This is what happens when you apply the old methods of business to the new world.

    --
    Want a free iPod? [freeipods.com]
    Or try a [freegamingsystems.com]

    • Re:Sucks for AFP (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jen729w ( 776097 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:54PM (#12031845)
      Er... "dinosaur"? "Certain destruction"? "Old methods of business"?

      Listen, e-vangelising is all well and good - sometimes. Other times, we actually *need* these old-methods companies. Say AFP folds; who, then, gathers the news which Google collates? Google sure as hell doesn't. They index, and that's all.

      AFP, BBC, ABC, Reuters; whatever, whoever: the fact is, these organisations are essential if we are to continue to receive cutting-edge, informative news from around the world.

      AFP doesn't want to "defend a natural monopoly". It wants to ensure that it obtains sufficient revenue to allow it to continue to pay its journalists, without whom Google News would be largely pointless.
    • what am I supposed to read when AFP goes out of business? your blog? no thanks.
      • You read the content from all the other news providers that are indexed via google news. They are the ones that understand that no (easily acessible) news is BAD news for your news-distribution-company.

        Google provides a short summary, and links to the site in question that provides the article. Surely this can only be a good thing for companies selling news? I would think that if you had a site with AFP content, and now suddenly all your google news hits disappear, you'd be looking for alternative news sou

  • Google's revenge... (Score:3, Informative)

    by jromz03 ( 686423 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:08PM (#12031520) Journal
    Will probably to sink AFP into the very very bottom of search results if not absent totally. AFP might have the right, but I'm sure they know the consequences of dealing with the #1 search engine.

  • Biting the Hand that Feeds them. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by trevdak ( 797540 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:10PM (#12031530) Homepage
    This scene is somewhat reminiscent of the scene from the Incredibles where victims of crimes start suing the superheroes for helping them.

    Google has become the doorway to the internet. Your site doesn't exist until Google indexes it. Anyone who sues them isn't trying to prevent copyright infringement or reproduction of their data, they are most likely looking for a reason to press charges and make a quick franc.

    • Re:Biting the Hand that Feeds them. (Score:5, Informative)

      by goon america ( 536413 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:41PM (#12031768) Homepage Journal
      AFP doesn't make money of its web site... they make money from selling news pictures (to other web sites).

      A lot of people seem to think that google was taking pictures from the AFP web site, and AFP sued them for it. That's not what happened. AFP sells a picture to, say, the New York Times. The Times puts this picture on the NYT site with the caption, "Photo by whoever, copyright 2005 Agency France Presse." Google then then takes this picture from the NYT site and puts it on the Google News front page. It has nothing to do with Google indexing the AFP site.

    • Re:Biting the Hand that Feeds them. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:41PM (#12031770) Homepage Journal
      OK so this is the umpteenth comment modded up that says the same thing: that afp needs google more than google needs afp. newsflash: THAT'S NOT TRUE.

      go to afp's homepage [afp.com]. you still think they rely on google for anything? that they want flocks of end-users(consumers) flocking to their site? no. that's not their business. check their 'products' and ask yourself is anyone coming through google likely to shell out money for something titled 'AFP's "ready-to-run" package in Flash format offers complete coverage of the the 2005 Formula 1 racing season'. they don't sell to users reading google news, they sell content for services like google news(and newspapers and whatever).

      they're protecting their customers(and so their income source) with this move, if anything.
      • the only way for google to be lawsuit-safe is to avoid indexing any AFP content.

        that means any webpage which carries any AFP articles or photos needs to be removed from google's index.

        since AFP doesn't rely on google for anything, there's no problem in doing so.

        as for afp.com? a quick null route of 158.50.0.0/16 solves the problem for me.
        • as for afp.com? a quick null route of 158.50.0.0/16 solves the problem for me.

          Bravo. I don't know where I would stand in this, but it's good that google is cooperating. I believe it was that world of ends site that said the Internet was an agreement. If those of us who do not agree with this AFP's actions were to null route it, drop it in our firewalls, blacklist it from our webservers and mail servers, maybe they'd get the point when the rest of the world (or at least portions of it) does not "agree
  • ..for promoting their news site! Geez, who does google think they are?
  • "...I do it because I am French. I am a bad mother fucker, am I not?"
  • How else will anyone find them excpept through google.

    Idiots. They're getting what they deserve.

    • How else will anyone find them excpept through google.

      AFP are a newswire service. That means they make ther money by selling copy to other news organizations. Professional journalists hardly need to use Google news to be aware of the existence of (despite all the /. snideness) one of the worlds premier news agencies.

    • Re:AFP will now disappear (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jen729w ( 776097 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @10:14PM (#12031971)
      Oh god... please... stop this. AFP is a massive, globally recognised news organisation. Just because they're not on Google News doesn't mean they will sink into a void. The French - to their enormous credit - are fiercely nationalistic. You're not French (forgive the assumption, but I'm fairly sure it's valid) and therefore have no idea as to the scope of AFP's influence within France. It's like saying "if the BBC refuse to allow Google to index their content, BBC News will disappear within a month!!". Utter, complete nonsense. As a Brit, news.bbc.co.uk is the only news source I check. Google News can go jump. The whole world does not think like you, America. Sorry if that upsets you.
      • "As a Brit, news.bbc.co.uk is the only news source I check."

        And people say Americans don't look close enough at things outside the US for thier own good.

        The BBC is good, but like CNN and Reuters, it can not be considered good enough to be the only source of news for a person.

        Not only am I an American, I'm one of those terrible "neo-con" "red-staters". You know the type of person that is working for a Jewish cabel and watches nothing but Fox News and listens to Limbaugh all the time.

        In my News Menu
        http:/

  • Just goes to show. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:17PM (#12031598) Journal
    Whatver reputation the French may have in the US as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," this incident proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that when carrying a firearm, the French will not hesitate to use deadly force against their own feet.

  • You're all ignoring one thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by VeryProfessional ( 805174 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:23PM (#12031644)

    AFP make their money by selling their stories to other media organizations. If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing), they will be cutting off their main source of revenue.

    All AFP is doing is using legitimate means to protect a legitimate business model.

    • Google news just links to news sites, sometimes with a picture thumbnail from a related story to illustrate the story headline better. They aren't presenting that content in any useful way to anyone except telling people it is there for them to click and see.
      -N
    • All AFP is doing is using legitimate means to protect a legitimate business model.

      Legitimate means would be not posting these articles on publicly accessible systems if they don't want the public to access them.
    • AFP make their money by selling their stories to other media organizations. If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing), they will be cutting off their main source of revenue.

      Google only provides links, not content. So Google is providing free advertising. And if AFP is giving away content for free on their own site, to anyone, it's really hard to see how they're being harmed.

      They sell wire services. Google news is not a substitute. If

    • Good lord (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:49PM (#12031819) Homepage
      If they allow their news to be disseminated without the appropriate fee being paid (as Google News is doing),

      If a link, a headline and a half-paragraph quotation is "disseminating", we're all fucked.

      Can't wait to see where we go next with this amazing new logic. "Amazon.com book reviews banned in france because people were quoting sentences from the books they reviewed, the book companies make their money by selling those books to customers, if they allow those sentences to be disseminated without the appropriate fee (as amazon.com book reviewers do) they will be cutting off their main source of revenue"...
    • the only way for google to be lawsuit-safe is to avoid indexing any page with any AFP content.

      google would just be using a legitimate means to protect themselves from frivolous copyright infringement lawsuits.

  • It's AFP, not APF (Score:5, Informative)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:25PM (#12031665) Homepage Journal
    Am I missing some obvious reason that you're using AFP and APF acronyms interchangeably? The wire service's name is AFP.

  • Google should remove all links to them (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:25PM (#12031667) Homepage
    Teach those assholes a lesson. Really, Google linking to them looked to me like FAIR USE that could only improve traffic to the French news site - and the news site's profits!

    I can not imagine how the Google News links could do anything but help make more profit for news sites that Google links to.

    Google News could link to my sites anyday - I will not complain :-)

  • Other news sites removed by Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Percent Man ( 756972 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:36PM (#12031733) Homepage
    Google also, and much more quietly, is removing [internetnews.com] the National Vanguard, known as a racist neo-Fascist organization, from its list of news sources. This raises the question, how the heck did a site like National Vanguard (no, I won't link to it) wind up on Google's list of news sources in the first place?

    And the battle between the good of free speech and the good of shutting up morons continues...

  • Google using AFP photos without attribution (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bushcat ( 615449 ) on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @09:55PM (#12031849)
    If one reads the complaint (link below), points 28 onwards demonstrate that Google is using AFP's photos without attribution: in other words, for each news item, the news source is identified. However, for the photos, the photo source is NOT identified. So, AFP's photos are used without the site visitor being aware that the photos are from AFP. Also, AFP distributes its photos with a copyright line at the top of the image and several lines of descriptive text at the bottom of the image. When the images are used by Google, these lines have been automagically stripped out.

    Everyone loves Google, so it's easy to mock AFP. But if this were being done by a site that everyone loves to hate, I think people would tend to side with AFP.

    As a side note, Agence France Presse is one of the Big Three (with AP and Reuters). It takes great pride in the quality of its photography.

    http://www.resourceshelf.com/legaldocs/afpvgoogle1 .pdf

    • Umm, excuse me? If you go to Google News, you'll see that every photo is attributed with the source it came from. I'm not sure what AFP's complaint is. Isn't it fair use to link a thumbnail to the original image? It's like publishing summaries in a book review so people will know if they want to read the book.

      --Quentin

    • They're thumbnails. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @11:03PM (#12032328) Homepage
      The thumbnails all directly link to the place where they appeared, where the copyright line may be clearly seen in full. Whether that line is visible on google news doesn't matter; the courts at least in America seem to have been pretty clear that if you thumbnail an image linked somewhere else and link the original, this isn't publishing and any copyright issues that image may hold aren't relevant because only the actual host is publishing the image, you're just linking it.

      if this were being done by a site that everyone loves to hate, I think people would tend to side with AFP.

      No I think if this were anyone else we'd be instead of concentrating on "OMFG IT'S GOOGLE" concentrating on the real issue, which is that AFP is expecting the traditional concepts of fair use that every website that's ever excerpted something and then linked it-- you know, which google news didn't invent-- to be reordered for them.
  • Apparently not as the AFP sees it. Having the ability to scour the playing ground at speed and unmatched power, it's inevitable the Google will dominate the Net. When that happens, it runs into opportunities untold, and the lesser players who might be a leader in its own right (e.g. AFP) sees that as a right to protect its ground in the open arena.

    Ultimately Search Engines' business is to provide information for consumers, and providing that information can come in a variety of manners the consumers are co
  • Google is going to have to clear a lot of images in order to get rid of French material in its news listings. Not only are they going to remove Jerry Lewis fan material, they are going to remove pictures such as this one [digitalfrog.com]. Leave nothing French online, google!
  • I think they should also make sure NONE of their content is every referenced by www.google.com, by locking all the Agence France Presse servers out of their spidering system. A mass update of the database is in order, too... delete everything with a URL that contains an AFP server.

    Give AFP what they ask for, even if it isn't what they're going to find that they want...

  • Before anyone starts talking about fair use... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You don't even need to get that far to see that Google will win. Here are four reasons why:
    1. If you don't want a search engine spidering your pictures and news stories, don't put them on the web. If AFP were paper only, Google could not violate their copyright. It saves AFP money to stay offline.
    2. If AFP decides to pay to go online to make money, they should know the rules of the Internet. First rule about search engines like Google: robots.txt [searchengineworld.com]. If they don't want Google to spider them, any half-decent Intern
  • Google News is basically just a search engine for news. How do these fools think people link to their site?! One has to wonder if their trying a cash out scam. I would counter sue with extortion.
  • Google doesn't have a timetable for when all AFP links and content will be removed from Google News, but the company is actively working on the matter

    Update Google.NewsLinks set Link = NULL where Agency = 'APF'

    Oy... now there's an overnight job if I ever saw one.
  • So the direct readers of AFP won't notice any difference at all, and the users of Google News will stop visiting AFP. Hmm, maybe that makes sense to them because they wish to have it removed, but it certainly don't make much sense to me.
  • Those posters who agreethis hurts AFP's business aren't entirely wrong. Their services are as often abused in the print world as on the web, tales of journalists taking relatively innocuous wire service grabs and blowing them up into controversies are too legion to mention; many urban myths got started that way. That's as much "without attribution" as sticking on a page without mentioning the source.

    But the real reason it WILL hurt AFP is that they will no longer be on the web radar screens of their real c

  • er? (Score:3, Informative)

    by JVert ( 578547 ) <corganbilly@ho t m a i l . c om> on Wednesday March 23, 2005 @11:57PM (#12032658) Journal
    Google news is still beta, it generates no revenue for google, there are no banners on google news. Of course google benefits greatly from this feature but there was an article on a certan blog about google not quite sure what they will do with google news because if they take it out of beta and begin making money from it then they will be liable for stealing other peoples news articles. But it implied under US law that if they were not making any money off it then they were no different then a blogger. Which now doesn't make sense to me because private party is certanly different then a corporation.
    Anyone else renember this article? about 6 months ago or more.

  • in related news (Score:3, Funny)

    by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @12:30AM (#12032831) Journal
    google is removing France from Google Maps...

  • Just to play devil's advocate (Score:4, Interesting)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @12:58AM (#12032955) Homepage
    Before I get totally flamed, let me start by saying Google News is my homepage, and its the first thing I look at every morning. I'm a huge fan.

    That having been said...

    IANAL but I honestly don't understand how Google News can possibly be legal.

    Forgeting for a moment whether or not ad revenue is eventually generated by all those linked-to sites: The question of whether or not legal-permission is required to link to a sub-level of another site is a legal issue from way back when.

    Back in 1997 (if memory serves) I remember it was ruled that paid content sites needed to seek permission before linking to the sublevel of another paid content site. Search engines were where the law got blurry. Google News! however doesn't seem like much of a search engine -- but I suppose one could make the argument that there is indeed search technology at work behind the scenes. From a user perspective however, Google News seems more like a content aggregator.

  • Google didn't respect their robots.txt (Score:3, Interesting)

    by setantae ( 103317 ) <ceri@submonkey.net> on Thursday March 24, 2005 @05:12AM (#12033966) Homepage
    I don't see why AFP are being painted as the bad guys here.
    They have a robots.txt that excludes their news articles, and yet Google is/was indexing them. Bad Google.

  • So it went something like this? (Score:4, Funny)

    by slapout ( 93640 ) on Thursday March 24, 2005 @09:48AM (#12035247)


    AFP: Being on the front page of one the most popular websites in the world is bad for us. We estimate that it has caused us $17.5 million!

    Person 1: How has it done that!?

    AFP: All those hits on our website caused us to go over our bandwidth limit!

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