‘Google encourages promiscuity’ – WSJ
p2pnet news view P2P:- Google is among the “parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet”.
Couldn’t agree more.
But who else thinks that?
Robert Thomson, the Aussie editor of the Wall Street Journal.
Taking a break in Australia last week, he said companies such as Google were profiting from the “mistaken perception” that content should be free, says The Australian.
“There is a collective consciousness among content creators that they are bearing the costs and that others are reaping some of the revenues — inevitably that profound contradiction will be a catalyst for action and the moment is nigh,” the story has him saying.
Google benefits from aggregating content from The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, he says, going on:
“Google argues they drive traffic to sites, but the whole Google sensibility is inimical to traditional brand loyalty. Google encourages promiscuity — and shamelessly so — and therefore a significant proportion of their users don’t necessarily associate that content with the creator.
“Therefore revenue that should be associated with the creator is not garnered.”
And media blogs and comment sites, “all of which traded on other people’s information,” are, “basically editorial echo chambers rather than centres of creation, and the cynicism they have about so-called traditional media is only matched by their opportunism in exploiting the quality of traditional media,” he stated.
Thomson, “also said it was incumbent on content creators to make their own websites compelling for readers,” according to The Australian.
The Australian - Google dubbed internet parasite by WSJ editor, April 6, 2009
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April 7th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
This guy is a wowser!
April 7th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Robert, Seriously mate Have you been smoking something?
Google is a searchengine last time I checked =P
I associate all p2pnet stories with Jon or Surfer heh
April 7th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Everyone is seeing tight times in today’s economy. Newspapers and news outlets aren’t getting the eyeballs they once were. They are no longer the darlings of news sources in the public’s eye. So it’s time to get the money elsewhere if you can’t make it yourself. So who has money we can rob from…and you come out with the above.
What they aren’t getting the point on, is that most of the news conglomerate went through corporate downsizing where they dumped workers, pocketed the payments that would have went for salaries and benefits, they reorganized time and again, and every time, they paid the CEO and upper management insane bonus while leaving those that made the product and did the work out of the loop.
Now there is no one left to actually do the work, they don’t have the time. Instead they are holding down the work of 3 to 4 people and that doesn’t leave time for investigative reporting or anything beyond syndicated news feeds. 80% or better of material you are reading on news sites, they didn’t do themselves. They got it and reprinted it at best or took the material and rewrote it at worst. If you wait on tradition media to give you the news, like a newspaper, by the time you have gotten the news it is hours or even near a day old and you paid for this? You get it on the net, it’s fairly fresh, often within hours of the event if not sooner.
Then add the bias that most of the newsworks do, slanting their news to fit their ideas of what they want you to think. Plus add the fact that little or no fact checking is now being done as it used to. It allows things such as info leaks by the government into how they want their citizens informed, not necessarily what is the truth. Most citizens are so aware of this slant and bias, they no longer are very interested in hearing it from their own news networks but know that they have a better chance of getting the real news off the net at some other country than the one they live in. None of this speaks very highly for the present news organizations as they have chucked what they did well for the quick buck. Getting in the quick buck is over with and now sustained work is what will bring in the bacon. You can’t do that with understaffed and under supplied. They are now getting the payback for taking the quick buck because they can’t do the job with the few they have.
Now that they are cut to the bone on real news work, there is no need of complaining that no one wants to hear what they have to repeat. Most of these charges to me appear to be bogus and merely a way to try and suck so funding from someone else for their lack.
April 7th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Google isn’t a news source anyway. It’s a news whore and in that sense, Thomson is correct.
Google ‘news’ items are ad hooks and sometimes stay up for days on end — long after their relevance has faded — while other genuine news doesn’t see the light of Google’s day.
Cheers!
April 8th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Yesterday I saw an interview with PR Genius Trent Reznor (NIN) done by Kevin Rose from Digg, and Trent Reznor couldn’t have made it more clear.
Music (in this case Content) is free. You’re lying to yourself if you think otherwise.
The moment content is digital, it becomes free whether you like it or not. There’s really no way to stop it from spreading (specially if you created great content) once it’s out there.
As a content creator your main interest should be to get that content to as many people as you can. Why not ride on the benefit of more people wanting free content and thinking of alternative business models? Why not use this content distribution shockwave to communicate important messages (or sell products?) ?
I can’t think of a more costly and harder to reproduce service than Google’s search, yet it’s a free service (and It could definitively be a paid one since it’s quality is so good compared to others) yet it’s free and they’re certainly not complaining about lack of money, they’re one of the most revenue intensive, influential and consequential online properties in the world.
In an information society, only top secret content should be paid for. If you’re writing news for the WSJ, isn’t it the point to have your news spread?
Adapt or die, there’s no “mistaken perception”, in reality, no matter how hard you delude yourself from it, content is free once you make it into ones and zeroes and put it on the network, there’s no way around it, stop fighting it, embrace it and learn to thrive on the new model.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Pistachios encourage death.
I laugh with you, Jon.