Google News: How Can It Make Money? - What's the Problem?
(Page 4 of 5 )
There are a couple of ways that Google News can consider in making money, but none of them come without some risk.
The first, and most obvious, is to sell ads. The problem? At that point, the company is making money from someone else's unlicensed, copyrighted work. They'd be taken to court, of course. In fact, Google's already been taken to court in Germany for their use of copyrighted stories and images on their site.
But is this a double standard? Sites like Internet.com's LinuxToday.com has been doing this for years, their page littered on a regular basis with both unlicensed, copyrighted material from numerous technical news sources, as well as ads. Whereas in the case of Google News clicking on the story will take readers to the actual location of the story, clicking on an article in LinuxToday takes readers to both more copyrighted material (usually two paragraphs), plus a discussion about the story on their site, and finally a link to the entire article on the site. This, of course, while banners are flashing left, right, and center. If Internet.com isn't violating fair use, why would Google be?
Here's the other twist. The Google search engine already makes money from copyrighted material. Whenever a search is run through the search engine, thousands of results come up, all of which link to pages with copyrighted material not belonging to Google. In addition, there are ads at the top and sides of the page, usually relating to what's being advertised. In this case, Google considered to be making money from the actual search and search terms, and not from the copyrighted material. So what's the difference?
The difference is in both the images used and the front page of the site. Nowhere in the course of Google Search do entire paragraphs of text get quotes. Neither do they get images. Yet, in Google news, the first thing visitors are greeted with are coherent paragraphs of information and images, laid out in a fashion similar to the front page of most major news sites. Both the paragraphs of text and the images are copyrighted information not belonging to Google. What if Google gave up the fancy front page and pictures, and made its news search identical to its content search? The company could then argue that its search and the presentation thereof are both in line with fair use. Sure, it wouldn't be as pretty as the sites of news outlets.
Next: Another Possible Solution >>
More Google Optimization Articles
More By Gnorb
/ 8 
