GNS: Google News Service
p2pnet news | Advertising:- A new online horror is being born.
Newsvertising.
Google is to publish agency news on its own site, and that’s, “likely to be met with some concern from the news industry, which has struggled to work out whether the web giant’s activities across video, advertising and book publishing are a threat or an opportunity,” says MediaGuardian.co.uk.
But it isn’t only the mainstream news corpse, watching traditional functions being steadily eroded by online reporting and reporters, which needs to worry.
Google’s primary raison d’être is to sell advertising which in and of itself is OK. You could say it’s commercial news.
It becomes a problem only when companies with a product or service to sell resort to trickery rather than the excellence of their offerings as a means of presenting them to the public.
“Today we’re launching a new feature on Google News that will help you quickly and easily find original stories from news publishers – including stories from some of the top news agencies in the world, such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press – and go directly to the original source to read more,” says Google on its site.
Can’t surfers do that already? Yes, but, “Duplicate detection means we’ll be able to display a better variety of sources with less duplication,” says Google.
“Instead of 20 ‘different’ articles (which actually used the exact same content), we’ll show the definitive original copy and give credit to the original journalist.”
Or, looked at another way, instead of being able to choose from posts which, although they may carry agency copy, might also have different interpretations and slants of the events being discussed, readers will only have access to materials presented by the agencies Google is in bed with.
And you KNOW advertising will crop up somewhere, sometime, somehow.
Enter newsvertising
If one product really was better than another, people would buy it.
With that as a back-drop, it’s not rocket science to figure out the reason Google rakes it in isn’t so much because there’s now a huge range of new and exciting product which needs somehow to be placed before us.
Rather, manufacturers use advertising try to make their mousetrap look better than all the other identical mousetraps.
Moreover, traditional, relatively staid, print ads are losing their punch. In-your-face pop-up add, floaters you have to manually get rid of, ‘welcome’ pages which are promoting something and which you have to either click away or endure before you can read the story, are more effective, especially as more and more people migrate to the Net.
Enter Google with its already vast, and steadily growing, armada of technologies designed to carry advertising to the masses.
“By removing duplicate articles from our results, we’ll be able to surface even more stories and viewpoints from journalists and publishers from around the world,” says Google, going on:”This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers’ most highly valued content: original content.”
Hmmmm.
“Previously, some of this content could be harder to find on Google News, and as a result of this change, you’ll have easier access to more of this content, and publishers will likely receive more traffic to their original content.”
Google newsverts will also enable the company to offer up even more unwanted advertising than it does already, with the agencies acting as vehicles.
“Google News famously remains one of the few Google services where ads have yet to come,” says searchengineland.com, going on:
Many have long supposed this is because Google fears putting up ads will cause some publishers to view the company as further “leeching” off their content. With agreements in place for hosted articles, why not get ads up on them as well?
“Our main focus is making sure the service is as good as possible for the service, so at this time we’re not looking at ads,” [Google News business product manager Josh] Cohen said.
I joked with Josh about this. Google News is five years old now – out of beta for nearly two years – surely it’s good enough for users to let the ads come in!
‘Google’s policy not to censor search results’
‘Do no Evil’ Google spinmeisters are world leaders in the field of bland, wide-eyed ‘gosh-golly’ statements and the company has already reversed itself in an area designed to protect the public.
As p2pnet posted here, “Google’s help entry on censorship used to read:
Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results.
These days, it states categorically, “It is Google’s policy not to censor search results.”
It then goes on in the same breath:
However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so.
That may, however, change because, but not because of human rights considerations. It seems, rather, that censorship may have an adverse affect on Google’s bottoms online.
Meanwhile, a model for inserting advertising into the news section already exists.
The company recently announced it had at last found a way to, “cash in on YouTube’s potential as a magnet for online video advertising and keep its audience loyal at the same time,” said the New York Times.
Ads will show up 15 seconds after someone starts watching a video. but they’ll be overlays at the bottom fifth of the screen, says the story, going on:
“A user can ignore the overlay, which will disappear after about 10 seconds, or close it. But if the user clicks on it, the video they were watching will stop and a video ad will begin playing. Once the ad is over, or if a user clicks on a box to close it, the original video will resume playing from the point where it was stopped.”
How long will the Google news section remain ad-free?
Google is paying for the agency content and the chances of it being willing to do that indefinitely with no returns aren’t high.
So don’t hold your breath.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
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September 3rd, 2007 at 8:28 am
You are doing exactly what you accuse Google of doing. You have ‘news’ stories to justify your advertising.
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:47 am
p2pnet doesn’t exist to sell advertising. It sells advertising to exist, and even that doesn’t bring in nearly enough.
I’m working hard to try to find a way to keep p2pnet going without having to carry any advertising. A recent effort which looked promising went down the tubes this weekend and now it’s back to square one. However, I firmly believe alternative news, information and commentary outlets such as p2pnet are absolutely essential if freedom of speech and expression are to survive in the face of continuing corporate and government efforts to suppress them and I’m determined to keep trying to find ways to keep p2pnet online.
October 10th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Small publishers worldwide are up in arms over Google News’ deal with newswires, which Wires say is ‘just a coincidence’.
I interviewed the AP Media Director who denied that they had anything to do with GN duplication cut; he said their contract was in place since last Dec. So isn’t it a coincidence that it [dup. cut] goes into affect the same day GN starts displaying wireservice content? The suffrage for many publishers from that action was great. The AP MD “denied that they had anything to do with Google’s actions and that their members actually ok’d the deal last year.” Hah!
But there is a development brewing for alternative sources like p2pnet Jon, you should contact me about that.
If you want to read our story on the Google News deal with the newswires, you might be surprised to find that it prompted them [ap] to contact me:
http://axcessnews.com/index.php/articles/show/id/12407 We did a follow up story where the AP Media Director was quoted, but the link escapes at this time