• PaidContent.org, Wednesday, May 6, 2009 11:15 AM

Is Google being compensated for other people's work? According to Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller, "there is a strong case to be made that Google is indeed getting a bigger piece of the pie than it deserves," especially from the perspective of content producers (such as Forbes.com) when the advertising market is "in a trough" and journalism as a business "seems to be shrinking by the day."

For starters, Spanfeller says, the last click gets way too much credit. Google is by far the biggest beneficiary of this "ill-conceived metric", and by selling keywords, is "working hard to maximize it." He thinks it's particularly ludicrous that Google makes marketers buy their own brand name so that competitors will not. But the area where the last-click metric is particularly flawed, is where "all the value of 'brand advertising' is discounted as consumers take action on that advertising by using their search bars to navigate to the marketers Web site."

Spanfeller estimates that Google makes roughly $60 million a year directing people to Forbes.com, and that 40% of those dollars are derived from search terms like "Forbes," "Forbes.com," or "Forbes Magazine". "Seems like a very nice chunk of change for simply being there," he says.

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