Cuban Rails Against Google, News Aggregators
- by David Goetzl @dgoetzl, February 2, 2010
Outspoken billionaire cum provocateur Mark Cuban charged Google and other content aggregators Tuesday of being freeloaders -- or worse. "The word that comes to mind is vampires," he said. "When you think about vampires, they just suck on your blood."
Cuban, who some might call a futurist and heads HDNet, said aggregators are effectively making money off others' expensive news-gathering.
He urged newspapers and others to block Google News from linking to their sites. "Show some balls," he said.
Google benefits from sponsored links when a person searches for a particular topic.
"There's absolutely no reason for you guys to be indexed on Google News ... if they don't pay you," he said, addressing publishers at a New York OnMedia event.
Google has argued that publishers can block content from its aggregation at any time, but suggests the system helps drive traffic to their sites. But as sites begin to erect pay walls and charge for content, it has altered a policy in which Google News users can only access five articles a day free on those sites.
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News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has been a strident anti-aggregator. Earlier this month, his company blocked an aggregator in the U.K. from linking to sites for News Corp. papers, including The Times of London. Murdoch has said his papers are erecting pay walls.
After Cuban delivered a keynote address Tuesday, he sat on a panel along with Huffington Post Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman, who said his company will be the anti-Murdoch. It has no intention to do anything but remain a fully ad-supported operation. "One hundred percent advertising," Coleman said.
Coleman said the company is not daunted by a free-content world, and has "a huge wonderful business with Google right now." Huffington Post has some cost advantages in a lean staff and no legacy distribution expenses.
Separately, Cuban said the text-heavy Kindle is a rudimentary and challenged device. "It looks like a first-generation product that has no future," he said. In contrast, the new iPad with its video and rich-media opportunities offers opportunities for publishers to experiment with new business models and sell advertising.
"Good content always has a place," Cuban added.
Perhaps Mr. Cuban would care to remove the mote in his eye before assisting the newspaper world with theirs: http://searchengineland.com/google-vampire-mark-cuban-mahalo-35039
Mr. Cuban must not be paying attention. First off, Yahoo and AP just inked a huge deal - so at least in Yahoo's case they're paying for the news they present (I get most of my news from Yahoo online as the Denver Post is now only three pages long and two-and-a-half pages are full page ads for hearing aids or teeth implants) and as far as this nonsense goes "the new iPad with its video and rich-media opportunities" Yo, Mark - it DOESN'T PLAY FLASH VIDEO, which is the core code-base for both YouTube and Hulu, it doesn't have a USB or SD card slot, it has no camera, it costs extra to hook up to a 3G network, my toaster has more memory - so WHAT multimedia capabilities would you be referring to here? My droid kicks it's ass and it makes phone calls, too.
My bad. I just spent five minutes of my day I'll never get back reading what Mark Cuban thinks about new aggregation.
It is unfortunate in today's personality-driven universe that if you have a name and have some money, you have a microphone. Whether you have something insightful to say or not.
Perhaps Martha Stewart should interview him about holiday decorations...
http://www.quisenblog.com twitter.com/mickeylonchar
curious comments from at least two of you who are also in the business of providing content to your customers. OK, Mark's an easy target, but I think his message is pretty simple. There's now a great disconnect between content originators and the compensation model "the marketplace" expects. Competant, objective and timely news reporting will disappear if the disconnect continues. Not to mention that diminishing voices will quickly erode whatever objectivity remains. New devices are great because the younger demos seem to engage with them, but free can't be the model.
This guy must have the best P.R going. Would we even be talking about him if he hadn't lucked out during those pre-crash, jazz age days when everything web-related was being over paid for?