Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

When it comes to Mr. Murdoch’s threats of locking out Google from News Corp, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land takes the typical view that someone who’s all Internet would.

Typical View of People who think newspapers should be thankful for Google Traffic

Google sends millions of people to newspaper sites. Newspaper sites couldn’t survive without it.

Exclusive access to newspaper content would not be an advantage for Bing against Google.

Danny Sullivan’s Exact Words

These newspapers don’t pay to be in Google’s editorial listings. They get tons of traffic from Google for free.

Here’s the thing though – we tend to value things according to what our perspectives are and what we are good with (or find success with).

Anyone who is a blogger or very involved in technology will tend to underestimate Mr. Murdoch. News Corp. is not a tiny company -

News Corporation (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) had total assets as of September 30, 2009 of approximately US$55 billion and total annual revenues of approximately US$30 billion.

Their market valuation on the NASDAQ is $32.34 billion.

Google have a market valuation of $178 billion on total assets of $37 billion and annual revenues of approximately $22 billion.

What exactly is Mr. Murdoch saying and does it make sense

Here is the full video for your perusal followed by the key points and my thoughts –

There are no news websites or blog websites anywhere in the world making any serious money

Assumption: Mr. Murdoch means news related blogs when he says Blog websites.

This would be pretty accurate. There are no news sites of any sort making a ton of money.

Search Engine Traffic – What’s the point of having someone come around occasionally. There’s not enough advertising in the world to make all the websites profitable.

This is actually a really good point.

Your customers are people who pay you for your service. People who spend their money.

If users pay nothing and advertisers do – then your customers are advertisers.

For Google, search users are their product. For newspapers, readers and advertisers are their customers.

When we start charging we’ll de-list from Google.

This takes a lot of guts. Kudos to Mr. Murdoch for saying this and even more if he does do it.

Newspapers are currently dying a death of a thousand cuts.

• Their perceived value is decreasing all the time.
• They are spending a lot to produce quality content that everyone can use for free.
• They are helping build up the brands (Yahoo News, etc.) that are killing them.

And so forth.

Newspapers might as well take their shot now and dissociate from the Free Internet Ethos.

Doctrine of fair use can be challenged in the Courts and barred altogether

If we look at the four factors that are evaluated for ‘fair use’ a few ones are interesting -

1. Does the new work only aim to ’supersede the objects’ of the original for reasons of personal profit. 
2. Quantity of the original that has been imported into the new work.
3. Effect upon work’s value.  

 There may be only a slight case – However, there definitely is one.

Everyone can afford a newspaper – they’re the cheapest thing in the world. eNewspapers will charge less.

Mr. Murdoch is pretty clear that cost savings will be passed on -

We won’t be using any paper. We won’t be using any printing press.

We won’t be using any trucks.

Mr. Murdoch also says that he’ll still be in the news business even if newspapers die out in 20 years.

TV, Radio, Newspaper, Internet, some new form of transmission – doesn’t matter.

Thoughts on Mr. Murdoch’s Interview

1. He’s very even keeled about everything. Nothing ruffled him.
2. He doesn’t pull any punches.  
3. It’s really interesting that he intends to be in news even if newspapers die.
4. He clearly says that no one under 30 reads newspapers.
5. He’s very confident that Google and the BBC and other companies will follow copyright and other laws.
6. He’s very clear when he doesn’t know an area and states it before saying anything.
7. His answer on whether he asks his editors to support his views on politics is perhaps the most amazing answer.
8. No thoughts of retirement. Would like to be remembered as someone who has made the world more interesting and given the public choice.

The biggest realization for me was – It’s not that Mr. Murdoch doesn’t understand the Internet – it’s that he understands very well that he’s in the business of selling news, and at a fair price.