Google has settled with Sofam and Scam, two news organizations in Belguim that had been disputing Google’s right to index and summarize their work in Google News. The most interesting bit of this story? Right here:
“We reached an agreement with Sofam and Scam that will help us make extensive use of their content,” Jessica Powell, a spokeswoman for Google, said in a phone interview yesterday. She declined to give details of the agreement or say whether it involved paying the groups for the content, and declined to say whether Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., was considering similar accords with the newspapers.
What do you think? Did Google pay up?
They either paid up or explained how Sofam and Scam could make more money (or lose less). That’s all these types of myopic, fear filled content goobers understand… Their days are numbered.
If they’d just take a moment to understand how the likes of scholar.google.com works and makes phenomenal business sense for scholastic publishers… I think they’d have an incremental income stream they never new existed before.
If Google paid (and I mean money, ranking, or any other form of compensation), then the tens of thousands of other newspapers out there are not getting a fair shake and once again the “divide and conquer” method works for Google.
If Google didn’t pay, then again, “divide and conquer” worked even better.
When will the distributed ownership of newspapers get together and enforce copyright laws on Google and the others?
Well at least another front just opened in Norway.
PS: the prior comment’s argument that “I think they’d have an incremental income stream they never new existed before.” doesn’t remove the right content owners have to control the Google’s use of their content. I don’t think bringing in billions of dollars without explicit permission of all owners is considered “fair use”. BTW, my main complaint is that Google and the others assume the non-existance of robots.txt grants permission, sorry but it doesn’t grant explicit permission.
Google’s big picture may be the first in history that relies so heavily on their ability to monetize content far better than the owner of the content. They probably only had to prepay some token amount that will be taken from future revenue sharing. But when Yahoo or MSN or others start paying for exclusivity how will content providers behave?
This is only a part of the story or the result that is shared that to without much infornmation.This means nothing but pay them $$ and settle the matter and give a press release saying the issue is resolved. This settlement proves that Google is getting powerful day by day and nothing (issues) is too complex for them to find a solution in their favor.