It’s somewhat ironic that I’m reading a Sunday newspaper while also reading online about Google’s agreement to enter into a wholesale agreement with four news wires – Associated Presss, Agence France-Presse, Press Association of Britain and Canadian Press.
Mathew Ingram provides a succinct take on what the deal means but the bottom line is many newspapers could start to see far less traffic from Google News. This is because Google will highlight stories provided by the news wires, which could see Google News users visit AP’s Web site, for example, rather than newspapers that publish (and pay for) AP’s stories.
Google may claim nothing much will change but this agreement is another punch below the belt for newspaper industry, which has not been waging a fight to remain viable as the Web becomes the way more people consume news. If you thought newspapers (and Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell) were having issues with Google News and how it was “aggregating” their content before, you can now expect some major fireworks to happen.
Do not be surprised, for example, if newspapers start to demand to have their content pulled from Google News. A big obstacle, however, is Google News accounts for a huge chunk of traffic for many newspapers so leaving it would be a major decision.
Still, maybe it’s time for some of the major newspapers (e.g The Guardian, New York Times, L.A. Times) to create their own online news portal to compete with Google News. Or perhaps it’s time for the newspaper industry to get behind Topix, whose investors include Gannett Co, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co.
The bottom line is there is a major war brewing between Google News and the newspaper industry. Unless Google starts strikes more deals soon, things could get ugly.
More: If the Google News agreement was bad enough the Newspaper Association of America said ad revenue in second-quarter fell 8.6% to $11.3-billion from the same period last year. This is the fourth straight quarterly decline in ad revenue.
What Google has done is disintermediate the newspapers and go directly to the source. This is what’s happening throughout society — the middleman is being squeezed. I’m afraid in this instance that the newspapers are helpless to do a thing. There will be no war — it’s already been fought and the newspapers lost.
Newspapers don’t have to demand anything from Google–not that Google would care. They can cut their content off from Google anytime they choose. They have that power right now. They won’t do that, however, as Google is as you said their major source of traffic.
Building their own portal won’t work either. People won’t use it. The portal is dead.