Shane Richmond on Google News
Shane Richmond over at the Telegraph has penned a wonderfully-common-sense piece on why the Guardian’s stance is pretty flawed.
The Guardian’s line was essentially that Google News is killing them, because they’re not making enough money from the adverts served on the pages people arrive at via Google News in order to sustain publishing the content online for free. Not only that, but they don’t reckon they can’t persuade consumers to cough up, either.
Fair enough argument, so far.
…and so they want Google to pay them for the content.
Erm. Right.
Shane Richmond likens the situation to that of the Yellow Pages, and he’s not too far wrong.
The bottom line is that if advertisers won’t pay for the content and consumers won’t pay for the content, you need to figure out a new revenue stream or ditch it: the Guardian’s position appears to be a wild shot in the dark at somebody who’s helping them, especially as Google announced a while ago that it was perfectly happy for news sources to stick articles behind paywalls.
But, really, if I was in Google’s position, I’d be tempted to just stop feeding Google News with the Guardian’s content. Let them pick up their ball and do whatever the hell they like with it.
