Google Collides With Belgium. Belgium Unscathed.
Oh, this is an interesting one!
A Belgium court ruling threatens to undermine Google News. The court ruled that Google was breaking the law by including headlines and links to stories published by the press in Belgium. If the rest of Europe follows this example, then this is bound to be painful for Google.
This excerpt hits the nail on the head, and strikes at the very heart of the Google model:
“We are asking for Google to pay and seek our authorisation to use our content … Google sells advertising and makes money on our content“
The Google business model relies on the huge margin that exists around free content. Google would no doubt argue that it is sending traffic to content providers, therefore a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship exists. Both correct, of course, but most of the power and profit in that relationship probably rests with Google.
The danger for Google is that all official news sources will want a bigger slice of the pie. If Google can do a deal with some of them, then they may have to do deals with all. Which will cost.
“A spokesman said the company believed the case was “entirely unnecessary”. “Google has a clear policy of respecting the wishes of content owners. If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News … all they have to do is ask,” he added.“
It will be very interesting to see how far this one will go…
September 19th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Pan-European Issues
The Belgian judge relied upon European law when making his decision. That means all 25 EU countries could come to the same conclusion.
My guess is that many news websites will picking up the phone to renegotiate with Google.
September 19th, 2006 at 1:34 pm
[...] A Belgium news service is suing Google for linking to their web pages without paying them for the content. Here in the US, we’re very conditioned to think anything that enhances are chances for profit is something to be grateful for, but the European mindset is a little different, and frankly I see where they’re coming from. It’s their content: why shouldn’t they have the right to require permission to reprint it? Isn’t that how copyrighted material offline works? On the other hand, what’s next? All the other European news services demanding payment for content linkage? What about other content providers? Small fries like me may benefit too much from Google linkage to want it restricted in any way, but what if other sites start rethinking the value of their relationship with Google? [...]
September 20th, 2006 at 4:53 am
Indeed.
People who use Google News do so in order to visit a collection of known news sources and alt news. I doubt people will remain just for alt news. What is the usage level of Google Blog Search, for example?
One or two newspapers dropping out wouldn’t affect Google, but a few hundred surely would.