My, my, my. Just a few weeks after the hew and cry over how idiotic and ludicrous Sam Zell’s comments were about trying to work “something” out with those “boys” at Google for Google News ripping off content at the Tribune, what do we have here?
A report out of the Scotland Sunday Herald that Google has capitulated to several UK newspapers in deals that would allow them to continuing “syndicating” their content for a fee. This is pretty Big News as Google hasn’t yet capitulated to anyone else — except the AP in North America, Agent France-Presse en France, and Belgium in … well, Belgium — so, it seems to be trying to hold their ground on all manner of fronts, including the YouTube front against Viacom.
Which, as the article rightly points out, might be the reason why you haven’t heard anything from Google just yet as it tries to fight off other newspapers ’round the world for these rights.
Google settling with newspapers — is this any surprise? Not really.
After all, we’ve heard from executives at Google that they feel that Viacom’s legal wranglings are nothing more than an elaborate gambit at trying to affect the licensing of copyrighted content on YouTube.
… which seems de rigeur these days.
And didn’t we just see Rupert Murdoch pull the plug on Photobucket’s widgetized videos days before its actual purchase? Who knows how that might have affected negotiations and the final purchase price (”See? We *own* you Photobucket … “)
So in spite of how, yes, Google doesn’t make any direct cash off of Google News, they have clearly deemed it a priority, and I think in this year we can forsee it making all kinds of deals to make sure that it is able to broadcast and / or be able to report on all kinds of content. Goodness knows it has the cash to do so, and it was almost prescient when it made its purchase of YouTube that it set aside a $200 million dollar warchest *just* to deal with its legal issues.
Google buying start ups every few days … making aggressive deals with content providers … building a dark fibre network punctuated with data centers …
Google’s on the move, folks. And the year’s not even half over, yet.
May 21st, 2007 at 6:50 pm | Permalink
[...] ways to maintain and monetize your value statement. Or just be patient enough for Google to figure it out for you. Tags: [...]
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:18 pm | Permalink
below is an interesting article worth reading in the context of Google News’s issue above and namely where the border really is between reproducing the content in whole and extracting small snippets from content found on third party sites providing a source link in return…
Content owners vs. Content mash-ups:
http://nextnetnews.blogspot.com/2007/02/content-owners-vs-content-mash-ups.html
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:49 am | Permalink
[...] To (Re)Publish and Host News! September 2nd, 2007 at 12:49 am Earlier this year, when Sam Zell bought the Tribune for around $8 billion dollars, he brought attention to Google News at the time, alluding to how it was ripping of traditional [...]
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:51 am | Permalink
[...] To (Re)Publish and Host News! September 2nd, 2007 at 12:49 am Earlier this year, when Sam Zell bought the Tribune for around $8 billion dollars, he brought attention to Google News at the time, alluding to how it was ripping of traditional [...]
July 26th, 2008 at 8:17 am | Permalink
[...] referring to, specifically, the sabre rattling that Sam Zell made about a year ago when he purchased Tribune, and the threats he was making against Google at the time — that Google is liable for lost [...]