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When Tribune Corp was met with two similar offers for its media conglomerate that includes the LA Times, the Chicago-based company decided that it felt better selling to a fellow Chicagoian, real estate billionaire Sam Zell than to a group of billionaires living here in LA.
Although Zell will be ponying up just $300 million of the $8.2 billion deal, he will be calling the shots. And on his radar, incredibly is Google, and how they "steal" from newspapers.
In conversations before and after a speech Zell delivered Thursday night at Stanford Law School in Palo Alto, Calif., the billionaire said newspapers could not economically sustain the practice of allowing their articles, photos and other content to be used free by other Internet news aggregators.Dear Zell. Perhaps you should go back to selling real estate and railroad cars. Because if you can't figure out a way to make money off of web sites like Google and Google News linking to your newspaper(s), then you have no business being in the news business in 2007.
"If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" Zell said during the question period after his speech. "Not very."Newspapers have allowed Google to use their articles in exchange for a small cut of advertising revenue, but search engines also help to distribute their content to wider online audiences. Google and Yahoo have financial arrangements with wire services, such as the Associated Press, to provide news stories and photos. Washington Post 4/7/07
If you would like LAist to stop linking to stories in the Times too, just say the word, you ridiculous old man.
Either way, Tribune Company, great job on your due diligence.
"Spazmat, Evolve, Risk 1" by C-Monster via LAist Featured Photos
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Before dismissing him, consider for a moment that the billionaire has some experience and insight of value. I actually think Sam Zell has a point, and I've explained why on my blog.
The author seems to be settling a personal vendetta with Zell because The Tribune decided to sell to Zell instead of bidders from LA. The tribune decided that Zell's was a better offer - get over it.
the author has no personal feelings toward or against Zell, the author is just sick of people with zero understanding of the internet talking about it as if they knew something, and worse, possibly doing something with that lack of knowledge.
if you agree with Zell that Google would be nothing without newspapers and that Google is stealing from newspapers in a way thats hurting the industry, please align yourself with the morons and be done with it.
Tony, I don't think Google "would be nothing" without newspapers. But Google News would be. And I do agree with Zell, that there's an argument that taking all of a newspaper's headlines, photos and blurbs is equal to theft. Fair use would apply if we were talking about just a single article. We're not. We're talking about all of the articles, all of the content, repackaged on a Google home page about news. There is an argument that this is copyright infringement because of the grand scale of the copying.
For now, I'm just happy to see that Zell realizes that the Internet exists and is an important medium. The Tribune never seemed to get that memo as evidenced by Spring Street's own internal investigation which concluded the LA Times to be "Web stupid."
There's a big distinction to be made between Google and Yahoo News. Yahoo's news content is determined by humans as opposed to an algorithm. I'll never understand why Google News front page will lead with some random UK or EU story when I'm clearly browsing from the U.S. Also, in the cases that Yahoo is hosting news content, i.e. from AP, AFP, Reuters, and the video content from CNN, ABC, etc -- these are partnerships. Google does not have the same partnerships with the content it reproduces -- albeit in "snippets" -- which is the source of some controversy. (see for example, the suit they settled with AFP this weekend -- Google signed a licensing agreement in the end). The copyright controversy gets really fierce when you look at Google's Book Search plans. People go apeshit on that one, and they're not all morons.
i agree with you Andy that Google's Book Search ideas are far more intrusionary.
Plus if you read the quote that i pulled, it tells you that Google has a deal with the newpapers that they link to to split the ad revenues from Google to the newspapers. So Zell is as clueless as anyone who claims that Google "steals" from newspapers.
The LA Times is one of the 3 US newspapers who should be kissing the ass of Google. the NYT, the Washington Post, and the LA Times have never been more read than now, thanks to blogs, who oftentimes get their news from Google and Yahoo, and then link their readers to the original source. No blogger links to Google News, because you cant, we link to the newspaper who did the work. But we got there either from Google News or other blogs who read it from there or who read it from another blog who read it from there.
Meanwhile if Zell wants to turn his back on Google News, there are THOUSANDS of other news sources who would love to be on the front page of Google News in their place.
Newspapers have almost all gotten it wrong about the web from Day one. They put their best stuff behind either pay walls or subscription walls, they dont add the pictures properly to the stories, they don't encourage in-house blogs or extended stories to reside on their sites, and worse, they try to build an artificial division between the blogosphere and "traditional journalism" like the scared old men that they are.
That is how you get guys like Zell putting his foot in his mouth trying to call a jihad against Goog, not at all realizing that he's fighting one of his biggest sources of traffic.
But whats really surprising is to get readers of LAist who believe that using an LA Times headline that clicks over to the LATimes.com is any sort of theft. It is free advertising! We here at LAist pour our hearts into these stories. We would be thrilled if Google "stole" our headlines and pictures and ledes and sent those millions of readers to us. Duh.
Google News is the signpost that you want your flier on. They take maybe one sentence. If that! Usually it's a headline or a picture. And as someone who looks at web traffic numbers every day, we know when Google News is using our photos and we LOVE IT because it's bringing traffic to this page and if they come for the picture they might stay for the other stuff.
If Zell wants to wage war on free advertising thats one thing, but Google pays Zell to link to his dumb newspaper, which is why Zell is a stupid old man who should go back to flipping houses or whatever he was doing when he was not running newspapers or websites.
What's funny is it takes less time and effort to simply opt-out of Google News than it takes to waste all this time complaining about the "problem". Then, when traffic falls, they can simply ask to be re-included (or not, their choice of course).
I don't think you understand the costs of the news organizations that produce the content. Killing Google may not be the answer for any newspaper, but neither is the status quo. The current revenue generated by on-line ads does not equal the costs to produce the content by a wide margin. Something has to change.