Google Reconciliatory note - The Murdoch Effect

Wed Dec 02 17:41:00 IST 2009, by Abhishek Mehta

At last, Google has "REACTED" to the needs of paid content publishers. Consider this as change of heart or a survival compulsion based on your discretion but Google has sent a reconciliatory note on its official Blog, under the program name "First Click Free". This program is meant to take care of the concerns of news publishers worldwide regarding content aggregator services like Google search and news.

Point of Contention:

Google indexes published content of news websites for its search engine and other services like "Google News"; these services are termed as aggregators. Web searchers use these services and Google earns revenue from showing adverts on right hand side (see the image). Such external content plays an important role in Google search results, but these web searchers do not fit into paid/unpaid subscription based business models of source websites. So, logically it makes sense for such sites to ask for money from Google (as they are anyways earning form netizens) or turn off the digital tap. Google's traffic generates advertisement revenue for publishers but that is not good enough, as all publishers have agreed.

First Click Free

Google's Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager explained "First Click Free" on official blog***:

"First Click Free" is a program where the news publishers will allow their content to be indexed by Google crawlers even for the subscription-based content. Thus allowing netizens to search this content through Google searches. To address the publisher's concerns there are two paths in this program. First user click will be treated as free and Googler will be given access to the whole article. If the Googler navigates the publishers website after this link, publisher can ask for login or registration. But if the Googler clicks more than 5 times on a publisher's website from Google aggregator in a single day Google will forward such request to the registration page by itself. Publishers can manage such settings in their Google Webmaster account.

The Murdoch Effect:

Just few weeks back, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch has diagnosed search engines like Google with "content kleptomania" (Murdoch vs. Google). Murdoch, who is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of News Corporation said in an interview, that he is considering banning Google from listing his company's contents when News Corp. starts charging online readers in June next year. Google released a public notification in its vindication, saying, they will be glad to remove News Corps. sites from its indexes and have also listed the steps by which News Corp can do it itself. But Murdoch's statement made news across the globe, as it was widely seen as a trendsetter.

So, "First Click Free" seen in the light of Murdoch's statement is a "significant success" for the troubled print and published media, and more or less verifies the concerns in the newspaper industry that Google is using newspaper content unfairly. Newspapers around the world spend money and risk themselves to bring the news; content aggregators like Google earn advertising money, as they have become de facto standard for searching any information worldwide. Voices from print media are becoming stronger day by day, Rupert Murdoch is not the only odd guy, Associated Press' Chief executive; Tom Curley is another one. Like Murdoch, he also believes putting a cap on the news aggregators like Google News. According to him, their stories are circulated around the world by news aggregator websites without respecting the copyright laws. He has also upped his ante against bloggers, YouTube, social networking and bookmarking sites that according to him have become "preferred destination for breaking news and takes charge of their content, without permission".

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Being a independent Blogger, I hold loyalty towards netizens and I believe this reconciliatory note by Google holds ground for future negotiations. This kind off standoff between Media moguls and Internet Maharaja is not healthy, for netizens it is real bad (Murdoch Vs. Google: None can win, netizens will loose), hope we will be out of it soon.

Reference:

*** Google and paid content

Posted at 05:41PM Dec 02, 2009 by ABhi in Trends  |  Comments[1]