Google, say it aint so.
Duncan Riley at TechCrunch wrote earlier this morning about a Sunday Herald article that reports that Google is making deals with several UK media groups to show results on Google News.
Two take aways from the brewing commentary across some of the posts that I have read thus far:
- If deals are going to be struck between Google and media groups around search and discovery, other aggregations and syndicating services might be dead on arrival if content is made available only to specific aggregations.
- Does Google have the right to serve ads on its news page?
Assuming this news is true, this kicks off a possible shift in the current relationship between content producers and content distributors where the distributor pays the content publisher. Traditionally a manufacturer pays a distributor or lets a distributor take a commission or super impose value add services in exchange for pushing product. The web created a new mechanism where the distributor served up ads instead of charging the content producer. This helped a lot of smaller publishers get eyeballs without having to pay for distribution. With the rise of the blogosphere, and proliferation of high quality content from smaller or niche publishers and bloggers, no one is safe and just about everyone needs distributors to some degree to level the playing field on access to quality.
Lets be honest. If I were a publisher and Google came knocking/responded to my request to give me an exclusive or pay me for showing my content, its a pretty sweet deal given Google’s control of eyeballs. What’s baffling is that Google would offer any set of publishers such a deal, no matter how large the publisher. Consumers are going to loose confidence in the algorithm that’s supposed to automagically present the hottest stories from the best sources.
As to whether Google should show ads on their news agregation touch points, yes they should. They are providing a service to the consumer who is clearly ok with seeing an Ad in return for good search results or reliable news aggregation for that matter. Google, together with other aggregator service providers, enable publishers get to show case their content at all available consumer touch points. And they make money doing that.
Kevin Burton is spot on with regard to the issue of Ads. He says in the comments on the TechCrunch post: “You’re wrong that Google News would face problems if they ran ads. These publishers needs Google News more than they need them. Even if they DO run ads everyone wins. Google News only shows a small fraction of the article mandating a click through . A rising tide lifts all boats.”
So with this I’m hoping that this deal is centered around something like full article access or there’s some other integration of this content across the Google eyeball universe.
See also: discussions on Techmeme, and analysis on eWeek, and Publishing 2.0)
Cheers, Sameer
Update: Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land reports that Google denies any such deal.
technorati tags:ZapTXT, Google, Publishing, Media, Advertising
