FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, updates us today on something we told you about last week: If Google Is Handing Out Free Money, Newspapers Would Like Some.
If you want the Cliffs Notes version of this, the AP and its members newspapers are gearing up to sue Google because Google News aggregates news from the papers, and the papers and AP apparently believe that fewer people are reading their content as a result of this aggregation.
What they continuously ignore is the fact that more people get to the newspaper stories and newspaper Web sites as a result of finding the stories on Google News or through Google searches than would otherwise get to the sites. When I do a search for “man bites dog” I might end up at the Montgomery Alabama newspaper for a story. If I were just scouring news sites for stories about a man biting a dog, chances are I’d never end up on the Montogomery Alabama newspaper site, and therefore would never get the story.
Google helps newspapers. Newspapers help Google. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
We all want newspapers to survive, but they’ve got to do their part by not being stupid.
I buy the logic, even if those who are linked do not.
AP and the newspapers don’t have a case. Google has offered to exclude them from being listed in Google News, and they only need to take the affirmative to do it.