Print publishers, feeling marginalized by the proliferation of free news on the Web, are lashing out now, demanding compensation from search engines for unfairly exploiting their content. On Tuesday
the European group The World Association of Newspapers, which includes newspaper, magazine and book publishers, accused Google and the rest of building a business "on the back of kleptomania," and
threatened legal action if the search companies refuse to comply. The group's president said that while consumers and publishers alike need search engines to make information on the Web readily
accessible, search engines also need news content providers in order to provide their news aggregation services. Google News is perhaps the most obvious example, but Google--at least so far--makes no
money whatsoever on the service. Nevertheless, the group complains that publishers lose out on ad revenue because consumers end up reading the headlines and blurbs on these services and no longer need
to link to the stories themselves. As the
Financial Times points out, the growth of news content aggregators coincides with a rapid decline in readership and ad revenue growth for print
newspapers. In fact, advertisers' newspaper budgets in many instances are shifting online, but newspaper publishers aren't feeling an equal and opposite up-tick in their ad revenues at their
respective Web sites. Instead, they feel the money is going to companies like Google. The World Association of Newspapers, which represents 18,000 newspapers and 73 national associations, is looking
into new standards and policies that could establish a commercial relationship between publishers, search engines and content aggregators. The group's president said that while Yahoo, MSN, and Ask
Jeeves were willing to open a dialogue, Google remained adamant that all information should be available for free.
Read the whole story at Financial Times »
