News Corp. Claims Google News Is An Antitrust Violation In Europe
from the good-luck-with-that-one... dept
With Google already facing antitrust issues in the EU over Android (and likely over search as well), News Corp has decided to pile on and to file a complaint with the EU Commission claiming that Google News is also an antitrust problem.News Corp is concerned Google reinforces its dominance in general search by “scraping” or copying content from publishers to display the results of news articles, according to the person. News Corp alleges that if the publisher doesn’t want the content to be copied, Google doesn’t show the articles in the results at all, the person said.That News Corp hates Google is well known. The company's CEO, Robert Thomson, has a history of barely comprehensible anti-Google rants, based on a confused (i.e. wrong) understanding of how the internet works. Thomson keeps claiming that Google is "stealing" News Corp content by linking people to it and sending the company traffic.
And, again, that seems to be the basis of the complaint here as well. It's difficult to parse what the complaint even means. News Corp "is concerned Google reinforces its dominance in general search by “scraping” or copying content from publishers to display the results of news articles...." Huh? Google indexes the web. That's what it does. That's how search engines work. Is News Corp trying to argue that indexing the internet is illegal? Really? And the fact that it's built a specialized news service -- how is that a problem?
And then the complaint seems to flip over into a complaint that Google doesn't do enough: "News Corp alleges that if the publisher doesn’t want the content to be copied, Google doesn’t show the articles in the results at all." Um, okay. If you don't want Google to index your content, then how can it show the articles in the results? It doesn't have the information to do so.
So what is News Corp's complaint here? First it's that Google indexes their content... and then they complain that if Google doesn't index their content, they won't show up in search results. This makes no sense at all.
Of course, that's because we know what the real complaint here is: News Corp wants Google to give it money. Whatever you might think of the EU's antitrust case against Google in other areas, this argument seems particularly ridiculous and just seems like Thomson and Rupert Murdoch's sour grapes over the fact that Google is a successful company.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: antitrust, eu, europe, google news, indexing, robert thomson, rupert murdoch, search
Companies: google, news corp.
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Repeat after me: 'I demand to be paid for the free advertising you're giving me.'
Google provides the service, which means Google gets to set the rules, if you don't want to be removed from the listings maybe don't try to shake down the company providing free traffic to your site.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Repeat after me: 'I demand to be paid for the free advertising you're giving me.'
I guess these dinosaur media companies don't get it - they think that they're simply entitled to make money for publishing content - even if their content is valued the same as everyone else... They simply can't live with the fact that their business model has dissolved and generates less revenue than it used to.
We call this evolution - you either adapt or die.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Repeat after me: 'I demand to be paid for the free advertising you're giving me.'
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Repeat after me: 'I demand to be paid for the free advertising you're giving me.'
Yes and no. A lot of newspaper financing was based on the knowledge that most copies would be read by multiple people who didn't pay for it. But, they were canny enough to know that this merely expanded the potential numbers of eyeballs for advertisers and they capitalised on this. Often, the cover price was too low for them to make a profit on the paper minus the ads, but they knew a low price would allow the ads to make them more profit than raising the price could ever do.
I know I've read copies of papers over the years (especially crap like The Sun and the Daily Fail) that I would never pay for. Same online, I will follow links occasionally to those cess pits depending on context given from a place like Google News, but I'd never go to their site otherwise.
At some point, the canny businessmen seem to have abandoned the industry, so they're reduced to this whining and self-destructive flailing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hi. We're from Legal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
nuff said
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: nuff said
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: nuff said
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-europe-should-learn-from-the-google-news-shutdown-i n-spain/article/2557966
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: nuff said
For an organization that has repeatedly made public anti-google rants, and now makes would could be taken as legal threats ("antitrust"), Google should just protect itself by permanently removing NewsCorp from all of Google's indexes.
That should make them happy. Google won't be scraping their content. Or 'stealing' anything from them.
And make it stick. No going back. Once they complain and want Google to re-list them in their indexes, Google should rightfully express legal concern, on advice of their counsel is even better, that NewsCorp and its CEO considers Google's indexing of their site to be an antitrust violation. Google, out of an abundance of caution has decided to take the safest course of action and permanently delist NewsCorp until the earlier of (1) all time, or (2) the universe has no remaining usable heat energy.
These idiots need to learn something. They obviously don't understand what they are talking about.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: nuff said
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: nuff said
This is really about a Google shakedown for money!!! I'm 100% for Google to not link to anything form them. Their traffic would drop like a rock also.
Quite frankly if I was Google, when a company complained like this, I'd get on the phone to whoever and say go ahead and BLOCK anything of their from being linked on Google as they're to lazy for a robot.txt at their site.
Of course then they're want the government to go after Google for blocking them and how unfair that is. So really Google can't win either way.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
warning, this does not compute
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Like this:
Can Donald Trump really hit 1237 before Cleveland?
CNN - 2 hours ago
(CNN) Donald Trump is now the only Republican presidential candidate with a realistic chance of winning the 1,237 votes to clinch the nomination before the national convention this summer
-
Which then links to a CNN article, driving viewers to that article and all its ads. CNN should be giving Google a part of that revenue, no?
-
GOOGLE IS DRIVING VIEWERS AND PAGE HITS. Got it?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Want a new white goods, where do you start, Google or the newspaper adverts?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
As Google & News Corp are competing for wallets in many different content areas there is no love lost between the two of them.
Newspapers are dying in their droves due to the loss of classified ads to internet competition & as far the the legacy industries are concerned Google is the internet, so therefore must be destroyed until the internet is News Corp et al.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
He's either misinformed or lying
From Google support:
You can have your content show up in Google search but not Google News. For the want of a robots.txt, a thousand billable lawyer hours were lost...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: He's either misinformed or lying
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: He's either misinformed or lying
Added to this, their journalists tend towards the criminality end of 'investigative'.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: He's either misinformed or lying
(Really. Rupert Murdoch is a Papal Knight.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"Google" News
If you have no idea who Harriet Tubman is, you're not alone
Washington Post - 38 minutes ago
Yesterday, the Treasury announced that it was putting Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill and booting Andrew Jackson to the back of it, prompting millions of Americans to turn to Google and ask: "Who is Harriet Tubman?
and a link:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_1_1_a&sa=t&usg=AFQjCNGF0IyV9ujw fx9jipnOQltkcfQMsw&cid=52779091118609&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fwonk %2Fwp%2F2016%2F04%2F21%2Fif-you-have-no-idea-who-harriet-tubman-is-youre-not-alone%2F&ei=avcYV_C MNYTM3QGpuL_gBw&rt=HOMEPAGE&vm=STANDARD&bvm=section&did=-2627029828849459092&sid =toptop&ssid=h&st=1&at=dt0
-
The damn link is longer than the lead in. I wish stupidity was painful. Then you could identify the dullards in an instant.
-
"News Corp alleges that if the publisher doesn’t want the content to be copied, Google doesn’t show the articles in the results at all, the person said." the person also said, IT HURTS!!!!
What? Is Google just supposed to provide a link with no description?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Let's not be entirely disingenuous here
It's stupid, yes, but Google is attempting to either show excerpts or no results at all, no middle ground.
Newscorp is in the wrong. I just don't want to disguise their actual argument.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Let's not be entirely disingenuous here
But they don't do that.
I wonder why?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Let's not be entirely disingenuous here
And then the Google crawler will show a blurb with the search result in Google. I don't think "Google News" has anything to do with this, this is about news that appears in Google Search. It seems to me that News Corp. wants what limbodog says: They want the article to appear in Google Search results without article excerpts underneath the link.
I can kind of understand the issue News Corp has with it; I know there have been countless times that I've searched for a piece of information and the Google blurb about a third-party article highlights the info I'm looking for (if my GoogleFu is strong that day), which obviates my need to visit the site. On the other hand, highlighting a blurb of the information I'm looking for tells me that site has the info I want, so I might be more likely to click on it. It would depend on what type of info I'm looking for.
I mean, I think New Corp's position is pretty dumb, but it's not as dumb as it's painted here.
However, while it's been several years since I was working on websites for bands and artists and such, I'm pretty sure it's trivial to use meta tags to feed the Google crawler the precise text you want displayed under your site in search results.
So that all leads me to believe that News Corp wants Google Search to continue working the way it does, blurbs and all, but now they want to paid every time an excerpt is displayed. This is something that sounds like madness to me. I don't necessarily read every blurb that pops up. How would the payment structure work?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Let's not be entirely disingenuous here
You can disable snippets, too. NewsCorp can literally have only the headline of a news story show up in only search and have nothing show up in News.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Let's not be entirely disingenuous here
Thanks for the link, very helpful context!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Google is not the internet
I swear with every article I read about the complaints, lawsuits, etc that countries and businesses aim at Google, I keep having the same thought. Google is not the internet!
Their "problems" is with the internet and how it works. But they don't understand the internet. The internet is not an entity, it's an interconnected group of millions (billions?) of users across the globe. It's not something they can sue and force to do what they want, so instead they attach a face to it, which is often Google.
Google is one of the name of the internet, so by aiming their guns at Google, they think they are aiming at the internet. Guess what? If Google closed up shop right now, none of the "problems" they are whining about would really go away. They just can't wrap their heads around, or don't care, that Google is not the internet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Google is not the internet
Google is big and has lots of money, their hope is that rather than go through the hassle of fighting back Google will just shove some money their way to shut them up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Google is not the internet
So in their desperate attempt at controlling something they don't understand, they attack the biggest power within the internet, hoping that this will give them the control they desire.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Google is not the internet
That might also reinforce the attempts by government and corporate actors to control Google, because for some parts of the population, controlling Google would be much the same as controlling their whole internet experience.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
As long as that news at 11 is only on a legacy news outlet.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I mean, it's nice that you seem to be trying to support an actual argument here but you myth need to clarify which one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The job of prosecutors
In the US, it is the job of the DOJ is to prosecute companies for breaking antitrust law. Hurting competition through unjust means.
It is the job of the EU to prosecute companies for being successful. Hurting competitors through innovative means.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Makes perfect sense
No wonder the newspaper business are all dying, the people running them are all insane.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Classifieds
This is the analogy that needs to be put to the judges, let the news sites argue this, for either way they put it they argue against themselves. Either for not charging for ads or that they should be paying advertisers. It would be interesting to see the news sites suddenly beset with lawsuits demanding the newsites pay for stolen content by advertisers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I often note that articles on TechDirt twist statements of opponents unneccessarily and I think it's a shame. Techdirt's positions are usually strong enough that they do neither need to employ strawman tactics nor to vilify the opposing side on principle. It debases TechDirt and undermines the valid factual arguments made by our side in those discussions.
What News Corp alleges here has nothing to do with indexing at all, but with the EU publisher's fetish of snippet tax. News Corp alleges that, if a service demands Google should show just the link, without the short excerpt usually given, Google instead removes the whole result instead of just the snippet part. It argues that, because of Googles dominant market power, a news site cannot accept the total removal from Google's results, and thus is coerced to allow snippets or else.
It is a clever argument, and one that might even be successful if you accept the basic premise of any antitrust regime. The only reason the threat of complete removal instead of snippet removal carries any weight is because of Googles near monopoly in the search market in many areas of the world. Which means this Google policy (if true) is Google using monopoly power to extract contractual advantages it would not otherwise be able to obtain. That does sound like a classic antitrust case to me. I still don't like it, and it irks me to admit they might have a point, but I think that is no reason to bury my head in the sand and twist their words until I do not have to admit that anymore.
Do you?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
But that just reinforces my argument above: they always give us enough real ammunition to use against them, can't we dispense with the fake arguments?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Really should treat the bigguns nicer...
WHY???
They're the "ones" who will be footing the bills for for The Moon/Mars/Ganymede.
Those kids' coming up now, and in the future are soooo lucky...
Just sayin' :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]