
An open letter to Eric Schmidt from Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer  - jamesbritt
http://futureofthebook.org/blog/2014/04/23/letter-from-mathias-dopfner-ceo-of-axel-springer/
======
monochr
It's always funny when you see old masters of the universe become Marxists
when someone is about to eat their lunch. Doubly so when it is a business that
has spent the better part of two centuries appropriating the public space into
a private one through ever increasing copyrights. Now they run across someone
who does it better than they could ever dream of. And all of a sudden the
forms of IP that Google uses to corner the market from publishers are in huge
need of public debate. One these people will cover in a neutral and even
handed way in their own publications. But what's not up for debate are the
bits of IP like they paywalling publicly funded research for a century or
more.

I'll take out my magnifying glass to look for my violin.

~~~
rolux
Very good point.

Döpfner's position is truly schizophrenic. He admires Google's success as a
business, states that his news sites depend on the traffic Google provides
(for free), but still wants the European Commission to regulate the fairness
of their search results, and has lobbied the German Government to make Google
pay for links to his content
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leistungsschutzrecht)).
With BILD, the flagship product of his publishing house, he is in charge of
the most hateful, sensationalist and ignorant mainstream news outlet in
Germany, however, he claims to be concerned about the future of journalism. He
likens Google's position to former state monopolists Deutsche Telekom and
Deutsche Post, yet his company has never contributed to the criticism of the
monopoly power of those German companies. And finally, he's worried about
privacy, while violating people's privacy has been, for decades, BILD's core
journalistic principle.

Döpfner's publishing house striving to become Europe's leading digital media
company is a hilarious, sad and frightening thing to imagine.

------
sentenza
Here is some context on the relationship between Mathias Döpfner, Axel
Springer and Google.

Axel Springer Verlag successfully lobbied the German government to write a law
that creates a "Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger", which extends German
copyright to include "whatever publishers do". This new copyright extension in
essence makes it possible for a publisher to extract money from people that
link to their content (which they previously put on the internet for everybody
to see!).

Here in Germany, it is considered a "lex Google", since they didn't really
manage to hide that the whole purpose of this law is to make Google pay Axel
Springer money for linking to Springer content in Google News.

Do you think this is weird, counterintuitive and generally damaging to the
Internet? That's the context needed to understand things coming out of
Döpfners mouth/keyboard.

~~~
blumentopf
Döpfner is trying to pivot the Axel Springer publishing house into a digital
media company but their efforts are laughable. They sold some of their
newspapers and magazines and are investing the money in dotcoms, but compared
to Google or even Yahoo they're just small fish. They're clueless about
technology so they resort to whining about the oh-so-evil Google.

For a quick laugh, watch this video of a tourist trip to Silicon Valley they
did last year:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4Rcip9SHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug4Rcip9SHg)

~~~
mturmon
I understand about 3 words of German and I found that video fascinating. Like
Russians from 1970 touring a Western supermarket or something.

~~~
rolux
Yes, you got the essence of it.

I understand more than 3 words of German, and the money quote, by Döpfner,
appears at the 6 minute mark:

"What I would hope... that we do not try now to play from now on the cliché of
a super cool Silicon Valley guy [laughter]. Let's really keep some sort of
decent German spiessertum."

The term "Spiessertum", and the German "Spiessbürger", refer to people with a
particularly narrow-minded mindset, determined by extreme conformism and
opposition to change.

~~~
mturmon
That word is great. I notice Google translates Spiessbürger as "philistine,"
which gets the conformity aspect, but doesn't capture the resistance to
change. In English, stick-in-the-mud ("spiess" means stick, but the etymology
of Spiessbürger is older than this) or fuddy-duddy capture some of this part
of the meaning.

"Babbit" or "Babbitry" may be the closest English terms to capturing the whole
meaning.

------
darklajid
Please. Don't allow people from that company a voice here. That abomination is
mostly (in)famous for a tabloid with headlines that would ALWAYS be flagged on
this site. And for bare-breasted girls on page three. And random
football/soccer news.

This is 4chan, printed. I haven't encountered anything worse, ever. I cannot
imagine that the person in charge of this company can write a single straight
(and true) sentence.

(Disclaimer: That company is dangerously big. Funnily enough it might be the
printed Google for Germany. They influence the media in gazillion ways. There
ARE some more toned down parts of Axel Springer, but as a whole it's
deapicable)

------
apsec112
Mr. Doepfner seems to fear Google's power. As a newspaper publisher, that is
reasonable. But in a wider societal context, as he seems to be implying, it is
nonsense. Google has so little political influence that the city council won't
let them build a twenty-foot bridge over a creek between two Google office
buildings ([http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/04/17/money-doesnt-
matter...](http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/04/17/money-doesnt-matter-in-
politics/)).

~~~
smacktoward
Maybe at the local level that's true, but at the Federal level, this is
changing. Google used to be very politically uninvolved, but they did a 180 on
that a few years back and started aggressively building a strong lobbying arm
a few years back [1], hiring a high-profile ex-Congresswoman, Susan Molinari,
to head it up [2]. This operation has grown to the point where in 2013 Google
hit #8 on the list of corporations that spend the most lobbying Congress [3],
with lobbying outlays greater than those of Comcast and Lockheed.

[1] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-
transfo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-transforming-
power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-master-of-
washington-
influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/business/susan-molinari-
ad...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/business/susan-molinari-adds-to-
googles-political-firepower.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

[3] [http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4394234/google-eight-
bigges...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4394234/google-eight-biggest-
record-lobbying-washington)

~~~
sounds
If you had as much money, would you not also spend some of it on lobbying?

I believe Google's actions were defensive in nature. I despise our politicians
who will take "contributions" and ignore the people who elected them; still,
if I had that much money I'd probably be lobbying too.

~~~
wfjackson
Aren't there companies that don't really spend a lot of money on lobbying even
if they make a lot of it? Like, say Apple.

~~~
jamesbritt
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/23/apple-on-pace-
to-d...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/23/apple-on-pace-to-double-
lobbying-spending-over-taxes-other-issues)

I guess it depends on what you consider "a lot of money."

------
lampe3
Axel springer is buying a lot of daily and weekly newspaper in germany sry but
we should fear axel springer too...

another view on that subject:
[http://www.jungewelt.de/2014/04-17/026.php?sstr=d%F6pfner](http://www.jungewelt.de/2014/04-17/026.php?sstr=d%F6pfner)

------
fidotron
The irony of this realisation that Google have changed the game completely is
that it is occurring long after the horse has bolted, and so much so that it
may not be entirely valid to target Google with so much venom. The reality is
the SV bubble has created a way of valuing things (privacy, IP, money itself)
that is not in keeping with the old world at all (being much of western
Europe, NYC, LA etc.) and is just moving on regardless of their concerns, many
of which I do happen to share.

Arguing the rights or wrongs of this is already too late, and the question to
be asked is given the changes in the way things are valued how are you going
to justify your existence in future? The very fact Google are struggling to
create new revenue streams that rival their ad one shows how difficult this
new game is to play, even for those that created it, and even for those
apparently so dominant.

This isn't unique to SV as the other great growth area on the planet, China,
has its own interesting take which bunnie called gongkai:
[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?cat=20)

You can only conclude that there is something holding back the old world.

If it were not obvious, regulation is going to achieve SFA, and the only way
to change the system is going to be to play it in such a way you get to pick
the rules. That used to be quietly whispering in the ears of authority, but
that is clearly no longer as effective as Mr Döpfner would like.

~~~
sounds
Try not to use acronyms; it's jarring to have to pause, go look up "Sweet Fuck
All," and resume.

Thanks though, for pointing out that Google is choosing to pour their efforts
into finding new areas of profit outside search. Obviously they could have
pursued regulatory capture instead, but so far it seems they're staying white
hat.

------
mcintyre1994
It's interesting that he admits his company rely on Google's search traffic
(while criticising them for showing any of their content, but I digress) - and
criticises them for algorithmic changes that don't benefit his company (fair
enough), then decries the idea that competitors pay for some new advertising
spot. So the attitude here is against paying?

But later he looks at Google's free services and claims that they're not free
since they use a behavioral currency (fair enough, they collect lots of data
of course) - and maybe it would be "better and cheaper" to use normal money.
So, we should be paying for services? Hmm. Not a completely equal comparison,
maybe they should be at the top of Google for whatever terms.. but it seems
odd to preach that I should pay for convenient services and they shouldn't for
the majority of their traffic.

I do agree with a lot of what he says, but I use Google services and find them
helpful.

Perhaps the fundamental issue here is that this is a big media company and
they want transparency into Google's algorithms. What's a media company going
to do with that? My guess is optimise their pages to abuse the algorithms and
dominate the search rankings. Great for them, judging by most media outlets,
terrible for the search user. I think I'd rather Google have a secret
algorithm than have my search results dominated by whoever can abuse a known
algorithm the most - especially because media companies I'd rather not hear
from (not necessarily Axel Springer) and scammers are among those with the
means to do so.

------
hagbardgroup
It's going to be a lot harder to maintain an open, global internet without the
moral legitimacy that derives from liberalism. If the internet is just going
to be a means to make states and criminals more capable of predating upon
ordinary people, then ordinary people will abandon it in a panic (or submit to
it meekly, and only use it carefully).

The thought that this can be reversed with mere lobbying is a little
ridiculous. We have to build more secure computing and telecom infrastructure,
or we will see a massive reversal in behavior. It does not matter how many
'internet of things' advertisements that CISCO buys if the general social
opinion is that adopting the technology will make you vulnerable to
governmental and criminal predation.

This letter is an example of some of the backlash that we can expect as this
patina of moral legitimacy washes off. A congressional committee (like the
Church committee) will not be sufficient to restore international trust, and
neither would a new president making promises. Google's business model rests
on trust, which is always harder to earn back than it is to gain in the first
place.

------
wtmcc
Original link to English translation
[http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/mathias-
doepf...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/mathias-doepfner-s-
open-letter-to-eric-schmidt-12900860.html?printPagedArticle=true)

Original link to German source
[http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/mathias-
doepfne...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/mathias-doepfner-
warum-wir-google-fuerchten-12897463.html?printPagedArticle=true)

------
mhd
I've worked with publishing houses, and boy, if there's an industry that's
more conservative, I don't even want to know...

And no, this was in the US/UK. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the Germans
would be even worse, considering that they're equally consolidated, even more
snooty (even harder boundaries between genre and "serious" literature) and
then there's the whole fixed book price deal...

------
zimbatm
It's hard for journals to compete on content aggregation now that there are
automated services where users can do the job themselves (hello HN).

One thing that was the Internet doesn't do well is investigation. Maybe
journals should try to look into ways of getting funding for specific affairs.
Get subscribers to pay for specific topics like the NSA leaks. I know I would
be ready to pay for that.

------
niels_olson
Welcome to the bizarre thought that percolates through the ultra-rich. I
suspect the ongoing leveling process of the internet will make more of this
visible over time. "Let them eat cake."

------
alexatkeplar
If Mathias Döpfner is so worried about Google, then running Google Analytics
across all his newspaper sites (Bild, Welt etc) probably isn't the smartest
move.

~~~
rolux
Can you provide some evidence that he does that?

I'm pretty certain that Döpfner composed his critique of privacy violations
(with a strange emphasis on cookies) while being logged in to Google+,
Facebook and whatnot -- but using Google analytics for his online properties
would put him on a completely different level of hypocrisy.

EDIT: You're correct. Here's the link:
[http://www.axelspringer.de/artikel/Hinweise-zum-
Datenschutz_...](http://www.axelspringer.de/artikel/Hinweise-zum-
Datenschutz_40410.html)

~~~
alexatkeplar
I checked a few of Axel Springer's domains before posting that.

------
caycep
Wasn't this part of a movie, Baader Meinhof Complex or something?

~~~
phaer
You mean the Axel Springer company? Yes, and not only a movie. One of their
businesses is the publication of germanys "BILD" newspaper which became a bit
more moderate in recent decades but was among the main enemies of the left-
wing students movement during the 60ies and 70ies from which the terrorist
RAF, the subject of the movie, spawned.

------
whoismua
"Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel."

Is this a turning point? Sure Google has clout and they're trying to buy as
much government protection [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-
is-transfo...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-google-is-
transforming-power-and-politicsgoogle-once-disdainful-of-lobbying-now-a-
master-of-washington-
influence/2014/04/12/51648b92-b4d3-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html) as
possible but the press does this for a living.

~~~
psbp
It's funny that your archaic quote undermines your point.

~~~
6cxs2hd6
Talking about ink isn't funnier than talking about digging under a foundation
("undermine"). I think we all know what both of you mean, with your non-
literal, colorful expressions. :)

GP makes a good point. Google is a de facto monopoly, no less than Microsoft
was. Even if you stipulate that Google got there through nicer tactics than
Microsoft, the end result is a similar huge concentration of power. We can
laugh at old school publishers feeling disoriented. We can feel comfortable
that Google won't use their power for "evil". Maybe that's a safe assumption
for the near future.

I think ultimately the most reassuring thing isn't Google's intentions, but
the inevitability that they too will hand the reins to someone new. Maybe
Amazon. Maybe a company that most of us have never heard of yet. (And during
that transition the world will become more uncertain and more interesting
again, for awhile.) But meanwhile Google has a huge amount of power, and
healthy skepticism is fair.

~~~
whoismua
He thinks that Google is on "our side." Sire they were, when it convenient to
their bottom line. Now, on commercial queries all above fold is paid links,
not what's "best for the user."

------
RighteousFervor
There will be people who will read this, agree with every word, and still make
excuses so they can use Google everyday and not change.

