European Publishers seeking legal restraint over Google
First the AFP sued Google over Google News, now book publishers are going after them over Google Print.
This isn’t exactly new either — anyone remember MP3.com’s RIAA fiasco?
In a statement, specifically aimed at Google News (and possible Google Print as well) the head of the European Publishers Council revealed that he believes people are going to pay for news content, as opposed to the domination of free ad-supported news today.
“It is fascinating to see how these companies ‘help themselves’ to copyright-protected material, build up their own business models around what they have collected, and parasitically, earn advertising revenue off the back of other people’s content”
Are these guys nuts for not only turning down free traffic, but spending millions on legal fees in the process?
I think Google should just remove them from their news sources (and search results) and see how they like that! Then they would probably scream about how Google has too much power because their web traffic went to shit in a hurry. They get all up in arms because Google is making money themselves “off their content”. But they (Google) are sending boatloads of traffic to the originating sites too. The article likens it to Yahoo’s news, but Yahoo republishes stories. Google doesn’t (only a tiny snippet and image). Hell, I’d PAY to get my sites on Google news!
PS - funny that that article has like 20something google ads on it!
Comment by Doug — December 7, 2005 @ 2:25 pm
I think Yahoo pays for their news feeds.
Comment by Andrew — December 7, 2005 @ 2:54 pm