Google recently closed its Print Ads program – dealing a blow to Newspapers’ hopes that Google would find them a magical revenue stream. Now, to add insult to injury, Google is beginning to show Ads on Google News pages in the US (just confirmed that there are no ads for Google News users in Canada … for now).
There are a few possibilities for what happens -
- Newspapers sue and get an agreement like book publishers did of 67% of profits.
- Newspapers sue, win and stop Google from running ads.
- Newspapers sue and Google wins. And that would really, really shake everything up.
- Newspapers sue, win and prevent Google from using their content in Google News.
- Newspapers do nothing. Rather unlikely.
Here are a few more snippets from various sources -
Google announced last night it had begun serving ads on Google News results pages in the United States. Queries that now turn up AdWords paid listings include thermos, Kindle, marketing and many others.
And Google is pretty flippant about legal ramifications -
Google did not immediately respond to questions on the possible legal ramifications of its News search ads. Sandra Baron, executive director at the Media Law Resource Center, suggested an “economic tension” exists between publishers and Google that could bubble up into legal action.
“A significant issue for content providers is whether or not what Google provides becomes a substitute for going to the actual content providers site,” she said. “When that tension becomes too great, people seek legal solutions to it.”
Interesting that the two terms Google mentions on their blog are iPhone and Kindle -
What this means is that when you enter a query like iPhone or Kindle into the Google News search box, you’ll see text ads alongside your News search results
John Battelle has some great articles about this - worth checking out. And this snippet matches my thoughts exactly -
Here’s the Google post announcing the move….nothing at all mentioned about sharing revenues with the news orgs who provide Google News its content. I cannot believe that this issue was not proactively dealt with. It must have been. Right? Readers in the news industry, speak up – any insight?
Just at the basic level, this shows that Google feels its news collation service provides enough value to justify running ads and making money off of it, and not sharing revenues with news content providers. It’s incredible Google took this step without partnering with newspapers. Perhaps strategically, given all the problems newspapers have to cope with these days, this is the time to make a move like this.
Google sure is making a lot of enemies all at the same time. At some point people are going to realize that letting Google morph into ‘the Internet + Custodian of the world’s information + Toll Charger for the world’s information’ isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | future of newspapers, google
