Publishers vs Google: what are the issues? Can a solution be found?

And herein lies the publishers' dilemma: making their content unavailable to Google would undoubtedly decrease their traffic, given the nature of online news reading which frequently involves jumping around between publications and searching for more information. But they view Google's business model as unjust, as the search engine seemingly makes a fortune from displaying content that it did not create, via search results and the aggregation service Google News. Criticism of Google has grown steeply in the last few months due to news publishers' growing resentment. Recent reports that Google's profits are soaring despite the recession are likely to fuel more backlash.

A solution seems hard to find. Would Google be willing to offer a share of its income to newspaper publishers, when it created a business model that arguably benefits both publisher and reader? But can it defend its use of others' content for its own financial gain?

Fighting for what's 'fair' 

In the Columbia Journalism Review, Peter Osnos has written a thorough summary of the issues of conflict between content providers and Google "in the link economy." As well as stressing Google's crucial and dominant role in the organisation of the Internet and noting that the traffic sent to newspaper websites via Google has been "inextricable from their audiences' lives," he expressing is a common view amongst traditional media that the Google system seems to be facilitating a shift away from paying  content providers for their work.

Osnos questions the often-cited phrase "information wants to be free," pointing out that the original quote from which this sound bite is taken is not so straightforward. In fact, Stewart Brand, the man who coined the line, followed it in his 1987 book with "information also wants to be expensive." Brand highlights the tension between these two opposite ideas: information wants to be free "because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine" but expensive "because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient." Brand's assumption that this tension would lead to "endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property,' the moral rightness of casual distribution" has become increasingly accurate.

So the question is, how to make sure all stakeholders in the content economy have a fair share? Taking into account evolving technology, changes in consumer habits and developing business models, this is no easy task. The free online content model which virtually all newspapers adopted is no longer working, Osnos stresses, as papers' profits are falling despite healthy traffic. And although he has not been able to come up with a clear solution to the problem, he did manage to explain the 'fairness' issues clearly and precisely, and suggest what needs to be changed.

Fair Conduct

• - Problem: traffic via Google does not necessarily end up on the site of whomever originally produced the content. The Huffington Post, for example, which aggregates much content, is highly skilled at search optimisation and can therefore often send its reproductions of stories to the top of a Google search. Osnos offers the example of a Sports Illustrated scoop which was broken via the website but did not lead Google searches. SI approached Google about this but did not receive a positive response.
• - Solution: algorithms that distribute Internet traffic need to include recognition of who got the story, with human help if necessary. Incidentally, this relates to a project that the Associated Press is working on, to create search landing pages that direct traffic to the original content producer.

Fair Use

• - Problem: Osmos notes that fair use in the US (the standards one must meet in order to use copyrighted content without the permission of rights holders) is far more flexible than he had first thought, as well as being extremely complicated. In the US, copyright law involves considering whether quoting the material is for commercial gain, the nature and scale of the work, the amount being used in relation to the whole, and the impact on the value of the material by its secondary use. In terms of aggregating links, Osmos states that the Google position is that a link and a small snippet is fair use, and the site that generated the content is a beneficiary of the traffic. However, news organisations feel that aggregators should pay for use of the content when they sell advertising around the links, which Google News started to do earlier this year. The issue becomes more complicated when taking into account whether aggregation enhances or detracts from the value of the original content, Osnos adds.
• - Solution: Negotiation seems to be Osnos's advice. A trial would take years, he believes. Newspaper executives have already been in talks with Google, but no details have been made public.

Fair compensation

• - Problem: how to monetise content which is currently free and make sure that the those who produced it are compensated?
• - Solution: as well as charging for content on individual websites, Osnos suggests that users could pay for content via telecom providers. Google could be a "kind of meter," Osnos proposes, helping to determine what percentage should go to the content originators.

Enthusiasm to protect intellectual property throughout the web, not just on aggregators such as Google, has been soaring in recent months. As well as ACAP, other possible solutions include US-based start-up Attributor, which is promising to monitor digital content and prevent its unlawful usage. The company is part of the Fair Syndication Consortium in the US, and has just made an agreement with Deutsche Presse-Agentur that allows the latter to promote and sell Attributor's services in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The Associated Press announced plans to stop misappropriation of content in April (although this is not directed at Google, with whom it has a licensing deal) and the organisation recently announced the adoption of a new microformat which includes usage information.

Going on the offensive?

Howard Weaver, former editor and McClatchy Vice President thinks that it is "time for news to play offense" and take on the search engines. He highlights the big advantage that news outlets can offer: "curated, edited, verified, sorted news" that focuses on what is most important and most reliable, and points out that this is something that Google cannot do. Google's lead, however, comes from the fact that it spans the globe, and newspapers "lack the scale and internet savvy to put that product in front of consumers who want it and for whom advertisers will pay." His solution therefore seems to be a new kind of search engine organised by newspapers themselves: they "will have to work together and win by offering a better product." Weaver reveals that he is on the board of a company that is putting together a proposal for such a product, which would give 50% of revenue back to those who create the stories.

Topix CEO Chris Tolles, however, disputes Weaver's calculations that led him to believe that the major aggregators and search engines make $15billion from news and news-related content and argues that rather, "news is a crap search product, and a loss leader, which is a big reason why Google news is pretty much a non revenue product." He points out that smaller news aggregators powered by journalists do exist and are not making "a ton of money" and he is convinced that "there is no money in building a news aggregator focused on trust."

Does Google, as Osnos suggests, as a major player in the way that news is presented to the audience, have a responsibility to help ensure that this news is suitably funded? If Google did not exist, would newspapers be making more money? Could an industry-run alternative work? How can publishers and search engines work together to ensure that news is read and monetised as much as possible?