Google-AFP Copyright Settlement Misses the Point
Agence France-Presse and Google have turned a copyright fight into a licensing agreement. According to News.com, Google can now post AFP's headlines, news summaries and photos in its Google News service. Terms of the deal weren't announced, but the fact that there's a deal at all misses the point of Google News.Google News isn't a traditional news outlet -- it's a news aggregator that, when used correctly, can benefit news organizations through in-bound links and publicity. For some reason, old-guard news organizations can't seem to understand this concept.
It's a simple equation: A link from a Google News category index or the Google News front page often yields significant in-bound traffic. Additional traffic helps boost visibility and brand awareness (two things you can never have enough of). These links provide an excellent opportunity to cross-link stories and introduce new readers to your content. Better still, you don't need to expend any additional energy -- just produce your content and make it available to the Google News spider (content sites need to be accepted into Google News, but most news organizations shouldn't have a problem with this).
I've witnessed the benefits of Google News on my own sites. A category link often brings a traffic spike, a front-page link brings an even bigger spike, and a photo link yields the best results (photos = Google News lottery).
The argument against Google News is that it's stealing content from news sites, but I fail to see how an inbound link coupled with a headline and deck is the equivalent to "grand theft content." If Google was grabbing entire articles and passing them off as its own, the copyright argument would be justified. But as it stands, Google News is an effective tool that should be embraced rather than litigated.
Comments:
online auto insurance car online auto uk insurance
Posted by: quote online insurance auto at September 15, 2008 9:15 AM
More Recent Stories:
• iPods and Violent Crime, Together at Last
• The Real Format War Has Yet to Begin
• New Currency in a Free World
• Web Analytics Stay Ridiculous
• Time for the "Oh My God It's Cold" Stories
• Memo to Jerry Yang: Use Your Shift Key
• Tutorial: Create a PDF with a Web Browser
• What's Behind that Multimedia Presentation?
• Microsoft Courts Yahoo with $44.6 Billion Deal
• Wi-Fi Comes to Boston Commuter Rail
