

Germany's top publisher bows to Google in news licensing row - BogdanCalin
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-sprngr-idUSKBN0IP1YT20141105

======
hellrich
Wanting to force someone to advertise your product and charge him for it
sounds so backwards, especially from a right-wing company. I'm happy this
terrible excuse for a publisher couldn't get through with it. Will be
interesting to see the Bild headlines about it, at the moment they are still
busy rallying against unions (e.g. by printing the phone numbers of union
leaders).

~~~
uniformlyrandom
To play the devil's advocate:

\- Bild makes money from the online visits.

\- Google makes money form the online visits as well.

\- Bild actually provides content for Google to generate that revenue.

Why should not Google pay for the content (a percentage of ad revenue
generated by the news.google.com would do nicely)?

~~~
fwn
They don't want Google to be able to buy it. They want Google to be forced to
buy it.

If you took ice cream for free that doesn't give anyone the right to force you
to buy it.

------
fwn
Since Google et al will always get exceptions from publishers, the
Leistungsschutzrecht will primarily hurt small companies and start-ups through
its newly embedded legal uncertainty.

Little business without a lobby in Germany..

------
simonh
I think the point here is being missed a bit. Yes they get a lot of benefit
from traffic coming from Google. The point is they want that traffic coming
directly to them.

If people go to Google News they see traffic from other alternative news
sources as well. These people are Google News users and sometimes see e.g. Die
Welt content, but Die Welt wants them to be Die Welt users. The publishers are
used to having a direct relationship with their readers, they don't want to be
competing with news clips and links from budget internet news sites and blog
aggregators.

What's most interesting is that they have their own Facebook pages. So these
guys are choosing to use Facebook for free to promote their brand, with
pictures and excerpts from their articles. The thing there is that a
relationship through Facebook can be more direct. The Facebook page is really
an extension of the Die Welt web site, bringing it closer to Facebook users
and trying to built that relationship. There's no way to do that through
Google News.

Now, I do agree they're going about their relationship with Google in a bone
headed and self-harming way. However they are doing it for what appear to them
to be valid reasons. That's why papers and magazines always preferred direct
subscriptions to sales on news stands. If they could have locked news stands
into exclusive relationships, they would have.

So I think we can expect to see more initiatives like this from these
publishers. Right now they're flailing around blindly and making fools of
themselves, but they are not going to give up on their actual goals and
eventually are likely to get smart about it. It'll be interesting to see what
that looks like, but I doubt any effective initiatives they may come up with
will be to the benefit of news consumers.

~~~
mankyd
> The point is they want that traffic coming directly to them.

Very insightful and true. The problem is that they can't find a strategy to
make this happen and are capitulating due to their lack of ability.

That is to say, _if_ they could find a way to make aggregator customers
instead into their customers, they wouldn't be backing down. What they're
discovering, however, is that, even if they weaken Google, they don't
strengthen themselves in the process. Readers simply turn to other sources.

This implies that readers perhaps don't value Axel Springer's content over
other news sources. Or, at least, they don't value it over the value of
aggregators.

------
pgeorgi
The best thing about their press release[0] is that within a couple of
sentences they a) complain that they'd lose seven-digits in advertising a year
per brand over the short listing on Google news and resulting decrease in
traffic, b) demand that Google pays them for the Google news interaction.

[0] [http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-
Da...](http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-
Datendokumentation-ab-Gravierender-Schaden-durch-verschlechterte-Suchanzeigen-
bei-Google_22070688.html)

~~~
uniformlyrandom
The question is, how much does Google make, a year, from its news aggregator
pages?

I bet it is more than Bild does.

If nobody allowed Google to do the snippets, Google's news business would
sink. But since they cannot pass the copyright law for the entire world,
Google's business is less affected by the ban. Because it is a monopoly.

Shit, these guys have a point.

~~~
nevi-me
I see it from a different angle. Google has invested in creating both Google
News, and search in general. Yes, Google's business would sink if nobody
allowed it to do snippets, but it's also not in their interest to do that.

Let's go to extremes and say that everyone the world over blocks Google from
indexing and aggregating their news sites. That means that smaller players can
enter the market, but if the blocking is based on principle; then those
smaller players would have to invest in infrastructure, IP, and still have to
pay publishers! Then publishers then also lose out.

From reading the article, it seems like the company is saying we're shooting
ourselves in the foot by blocking Google, yet we still want to piss in our
revenue fountain.

