Ask HN: Can someone please explain the logic of Google vs Newspapers?

[knightinblue]

After reading the recent articles about the brewing war between google and newspapers, I am still unclear about one thing - why did it start in the first place?

Newspapers need more eyeballs reading them so that they can make more money. Google sends traffic to papers --> more traffic means more money. How does blocking google help newspapers make MORE money?

Can someone please explain this? Why did this war start in the first place?

[gry]

It started because the newspaper industry is looking for new ways to mitigate declining revenue, IMHO. If the newspaper industry was doing well, we _probably_ would be hearing about how they're giving away news to drive eyeballs to sites -- much like how they operated as a newspaper, not a news organization who publishes to the web.

Craigslist and eBay are the two standouts who rang the knell.

http://news.cnet.com/Report-Craigslist-costing-newspapers-mi...

My understanding is for years, the newspapers gave news away for near free, subsidized by advertising and in the black because of it. Take out the classifieds and you've removed a valuable service to the community and a major revenue source. Now, they're reduced to news organizations. Their revenue has been declining. Aggregators are the current scapegoat and one of the potential revenue modes.

Fifteen years ago, I had five choices for daily print news. My two local papers, the USA Today, NYT and the Wall Street Journal. Today, each of them compete against themselves and a litany of other "print" news. CNN, ABC, CBS, and your local TV stations are now "print" publishers too. The competition is even more fierce.

The news industry as a whole changed with the internet. You no longer need presses and trucks or 100,000 watt transmitters to distribute news. The sour economy only expedites this shift. Some will come out as agents of change. Others will fight to maintain what they had. These are the ones who are trying to plug something that started long before aggregators.

edit: good read -- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=506483

[knightinblue]

Good explanation. But how does blocking google help them make more money?

[barry-cotter]

Newspapers provide facts and opinion. The facts can't be copyrighted so anyone can repeat them. The opinion and the bias of any particular newspaper are noise not signal from the point of view of increasing the actual information you have. Its the internet killing the newspapers, by unbundling what most customers want; entertainment, celebrity gossip, sports reporting, from what "serious journalists" go into journalism hoping to do, investigative reporting, political reporting, policy analysis, etc. Most people don't give a damn about any of this, but the institution of the newspaper means the advertisers who pay the salaries of everybody on the newspaper get the (large) audience of people who buy the paper for gossip and sport and the (small) one who buy it for policy wonkery, so there's a cross-subsidy. There are also bloggers who are much better than the vast majority of what you'll see in the papers. The average quality is lower, but the sample size is enormously bigger, and the variance is really rather large so the opinion niche is also threatened. And some people will do it excellently for free.

So the newspaper business model is dead. Facts can't be copyrighted, opinion is available for free, cross-subsidisation is no longer viable, and across the developed world the newspaper reading population is trending down. There are bright spots, like India, but most 1st world journalists are screwed.

So an entire industry is thrashing around with two choices;(a) die (b) Find an alternative business model. As the biggest, most profitable pure play internet company, shaking Google down is a better choice than resigning oneself to death. As such if you're looking for someone to get mad at, someone to negotiate with as if they're the Internet, they're the best bet.

[Tangurena]

The facts can't be copyrighted so anyone can repeat them.

The AP would disagree with you, as they've got a number of old case precidents claiming that "hot news" is a property right, and that they own it.

http://www.mediabistro.com/webnewser/news_alert/90yearold_la...

I predict that AP, along with the other aggregators such as AFP and Reuters will fall in line with the RIAA to buy legislation protecting their obsolete business models.

[Tangurena]

Newspapers print paper. They aren't in the business of making websites. Just like buggy whip manufacturers, they're a relic of the past.

Associated Press, which is a collective of newspapers, is in the role of MPAA/RIAA, because they believe that they have ownership of facts. This isn't the first time they got into trouble about their business model:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press_v._United_Stat...

[PaulMorgan]

Actually, buggy whip manufacturers are still in business:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip

I like to read my newspaper while eating lunch. Don't want to use a WiFi laptop for the same purpose. It doesn't fit very well on the table.

[mattmcknight]

They've mostly been complaining about Google News (as if it were the source of all Google's revenue). They are also disappointed by the fact that Google seems to make money in the process of sending people their way.

The real issue with their cash flow is that printing a paper is not an efficient way to run a website. If you stop printing the papers, the operating costs are much much lower.