Long ago, before we had a worldwide web and people communicated in a groundbreaking, but difficult format called Usenet, someone came up with an idea called "freeware." People soon determined that they preferred to get pretty good stuff over the Internet for free rather than more professional and polished stuff for money and that has caused a great deal of disruption as the Internet evolved to become a dominant force of content delivery.
Among the most obvious victims of freeware have been news-gathering organizations. Print publishers and broadcasters seemed well-suited to make the change at first. A print edition cost little more than pocket change and broadcast was almost totally free. In both cases, their real money came from advertisers who wanted access to those masses who followed that media.
Had media companies been willing to meet the challenges for change as they evolved in the middle 90s, perhaps they would have been able to cross the chasm into current times; but they did not. They remained loyal to their subscription models for far too long. They underestimate the small damages like classified ads moving to Craig's List, until those little changes made big differences; many just thought that their professionalism; their access to prominent people and events would allow their old ways to endure new times and new forms of competition.
That brings us to Google, which in my view, has been the most disruptive of all forces on traditional news organizations. Google gives us all free access to content that historically was produced by professionals as a way to earn a living. The advertising that supported media has migrated to the Internet where Google has become the largest beneficiary.
And when media companies say that revenue derived from advertising that supports content they produced, Google has shrugged it's mighty do-no-evil shoulders, telling media companies they are free to not make their content available on Google anymore.
I am no great fan of the public companies that own news-based organizations. neither are the editors and reporters who have worked for them. But that loss of revenue has been the driving force in the brutal reduction in paid news professionals.
Now there are two factors that have entered center stage. The first is Bing, a very nice search engine developed by Microsoft that many users find to be just as good as Google, but not really better in most cases.
Then there's the decision by Rupert Murdoch. mean-spirited billionaire owner of NewsCorp, which is perhaps the world's leading producer of news content, including the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and myriad and diverse other brands.
Murdoch has been persistent in arguing that Google and other search engines should pay professional news organizations for their content inthe form of sharing ad revenues. Google has declined, saying Murdoch is free to withhold his content from Google Search results.
The online community of course sides with Google, which is generally regarded as an ultimately cool company. It's billionaire leadership is younger and far more charming than Murdoch, wh has been called "old school" and clueless in recent days.
Maybe it's a personal thing, but I believe when someone prospers from someone else's work, the original producer should share in that wealth. I think fair beats cool every day.
For those who think social media practitioners can replace all professionals, I'd ask you to think again. A loss of professional news will not make the world safer, freer or better informed place.
For those of you who feel Google shareholders should be the overwhelming profit recipients of reporters hard work, I would ask you to rethink just what is fair and what is not.
In fact, now that I think about it, when Google and the search engines serve up my content-the content you are reading right now--and put an ad next to it, why should I not benefit from the revenue--or you--or anyone else?
Now, News Corp is forging an exclusive deal with Bing that would provide Microsoft's challenging search engine with content not available to people who just use Google. This complicates matters for users, but getting the News Corp content will still cost users nothing.
For those who argue that no news source has value because so many sources now produce news. This is partly true. Likewise, as we recently saw in Iran, on the Hudson River, in Gaza and Mumbai, citizens are very often producing the most valuable news content.
All true. But the world will not be a better or freer place without traditional news organizations. We are not close to the day when bloggers will be invited t attend White House news conferences. Nor will we very often be airdropped to cover wars or national disasters. Some citizen journalists may be digging into investigative efforts, but so far, nothing on the scale of Watergate has emerged.
Most people, myself I know, myself included, and some employed by the man, do not hold Rupert Murdock in a very high regard.
But let's not have that cloud the merits of his case for being compensated fairly for the reuse of NewsCorp content. And because others just happen to think Google is the coolest of Internet companies, one avowed to do no evil, should get away with prospering with intellectual property that others labored to produce.
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http://newcastleonhunter.com is a hobby WordPress blog of mine that looks like a regional news sheet. Readers think it is, too. But it's just me, 15 hours a week (I have a day job), adding 'on topic' media releases, occasional in depth articles, a bi-weekly tongue-in-cheek op-ed, and some erratic reader-supplied content. Plus weather, community calendar, etc.
Competition in this half-million person market comprises a single major newspaper and 2 local TV channels - that's 3 significant online presences. On many regional topics (those I can cover) my non-profit one-person amateur cardboard mockup news website equals - or out-rates - the others in Google searches, where almost all new visitor arrive from.
Such bemused visitors wonder what the heck it is, and who runs it (I do, anonymously) and why they never heard of it before (which is how I deduce it successfully appears to be what it's not).
The death of professional journalism (at the hands of fleeting bloggers) is what I unintentionally contribute to, and I'm conscious of that.
What does it all mean and where, or how, will it end? Let you know if I actually steal the big guys' readership.
Interesting piece, the problem is that (for better or worse) there is a culture of getting stuff for free on the internet that won't be easily eroded. Im not convinced that Murdoch has much chance of breaking that habit.
Also, Dannysullivan is right, Google arn't the providers of content they only facilitate peoples searches. It's not Google that steals content but the people who post replicated material.
Great article.
It costs a lot of time and dedication to write content. Good content. Viable news. The reason bloggers will never be airlifted into a war zone or take iconic pictures. Is that it takes so much money to create a story, a novel. To pass on snippets of complicated breaking news. Often takes much time, research and dedication.
That is what should be valued. Writers and news organizations need money to survive. Or we will be left with nothing but crying babies and cute kittens on You Tube.
The case with Google is that it is making more money in diverting the traffic to websites that the websites makes with that traffic. This clearly is the challenge of not having paid relationship with your end customer. Apple is the only company which has solved that problem. Media companies are not investing in technology. Now they cannot cry foul...
Seth Godin yesterday:
You don't charge the search engines to send people to articles on your site, you pay them.
If you can't make money from attention, you should do something else for a living. Charging money for attention gets you neither money nor attention.
Nice response Danny.
Shel, provoking, but I think you miss the macroeconomic argument that the supply of content is rising (millions of blogs/tweets/etc.) while demand is falling (consumers are creating content, not just watching, limiting their willingness to be passive recipients), pushing down the value (price) people are willing to pay to content producers.
Google is just an intermediary in this new marketplace -- a proxy for efficiency in finding what we want. Search engines help us find this new infinite supply of answers, so the margins people like Mr. Murdoch hope to protect are eroding as they can no longer limit content inventory. (This is what newspapers used to do -- "only we have the news, and you must wait to have it delivered to your door, and pay for this limited precious material.") If every house on the street starts giving rolls away, the price of bread will fall.
If Google stopped helping us find content tomorrow, another technology would step in. Technology enables efficiency and efficiency is a threat to business models that make bacon by limiting market access to material. Sure, it's not fair that those intermediary search technologies don't pay a toll to the actual content producers. But they're not really businesses -- they are a new market force.
"When Google and the search engines serve up my content-the content you are reading right now--and put an ad next to it, why should I not benefit from the revenue--or you--or anyone else?"
If indeed Google served up you content, not only would I think you should get some of the revenue -- I'd also think you should get damages for copyright infringement.
However, they don't do that. I didn't read this story on Google. I read it on your blog. Potentially, I could have found a link to it on Google. In this case, I followed a link on Twitter. But if merely linking to your content is "serving" it up, then does Twitter owe you money, too? And does anyone who links owe you money? And if I do a blog post and summarize some of what you said, do I further owe you money?
That's what clouds the case about the compensation Murdoch is entitled to. Not that Google is seen by some as cool or Murdoch is uncool. Those are factors with some, but the core issue is whether linking alone is content theft. If linking requires licensing. Or is it the manner in which you link -- compiling links on a similar topic, does that make it worse or not?
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