2 Dec 2009 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Judith Townend
It doesn’t sound likely but it’s true: Google is helping restrict access to free content.
Rupert Murdoch has flexed some muscle and forced a small concession by Google, it would seem.
Following the News Corp CEO’s threats to remove news content from Google’s search index and Google News, Google has updated its “First-Click-Free” system allowing publishers to restrict users’ free access to their sites.
Under the system, publishers who run closed content models — those Google calls “premium content providers” — can still be a part of Google News without releasing their content in full.
It was designed to allow users to access a news item via Google once — but of course, users could do this for lots of articles each day. Now, they will be limited to five items per day.
The publishers want to be part of Google, but they don’t want to disincentivise users from paying subscriptions and/or registering on the site.
Now, it looks like the closed content publishers can have their cake and eat it too, for the time being at least: Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen announced yesterday that publishers could charge for their content and still make it available via Google with the updated system. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” he explained in a blog post.
But at the end of the day, it’s a small move: Google still holds the power in this search relationship. Murdoch and the other big publishers want its juice. And they know it. Why else spend so much time attacking it?
Note this little reminder in Cohen’s piece:
“Paid content may not do as well as free options, but that is not a decision we make based on whether or not it’s free. It’s simply based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it.”
And Murdoch’s bound to be even angrier about this: a Fair Syndication Consortium study in the US [PDF at this link] has revealed that Google accounted for 53 per cent of ad revenue attracted by “unlicensed” online news content.
He’ll be uneasy about the concessionary crumbs thrown down to him, well aware that the Google cake isn’t as good as it first looks. One loophole might have been closed, but it’s not goodbye to free and open access news content just yet.
Judith Townend is senior reporter for journalism.co.uk.
twitter.com/journalismnews
26 Nov 2009 | Uncategorized
Index’s John Kampfner appeared on the BBC Six o’clock news last night, discussing the controversy over doctored images of Michelle Obama appearing prominently in Google image searches.
You can watch it here (item begins at 14m 30s)
25 Nov 2009 | Uncategorized
Mysterious. Just as the news leads with Google not taking down a picture of Michelle Obama, doctored to give her monkey features, it seems the image no longer comes up in a Google image search — at least from this central London desktop.
Google had earlier taken to buying its own Google ads, leading to this message:
Sometimes Google search results from the Internet can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries. We assure you that the views expressed by such sites are not in any way endorsed by Google.
Search engines are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Internet. A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.
The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.
We apologize if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google. We hope you understand our position regarding offensive results.
Sincerely,
The Google Team
One has to say, Google has probably done the best it can under the circumstances. It would be wrong to attempt to remove or relegate the content, as Google does not own it, but as a private company, they have a right to distance themselves from it.
13 Oct 2009 | Uncategorized
For Silicon Valley’s high-tech companies, finding the Next Big Thing is what matters most. When a Google executive came to London on 12 October, he delivered a speech at an apt venue: Policy Exchange, the favourite think thank of the party tipped to form Britain’s next government.
David Drummond, the 46-year-old American lawyer who serves as Google’s chief legal advisor, spoke about the ways in which Google has tried to ensure unfettered internet access by users worldwide.
But Google has also complied with requests from China and other countries to block websites, a practice seemingly at odds with its corporate motto, “Do no harm.” Drummond argued that criticism of Google’s policy in these areas has overlooked the larger global issue: increasingly repressive internet legislation in many of the 150 countries where the company operates.
(more…)
