Wednesday, September 08th, 2010
This is Why News Organizations Will Die
Posted:Friday, September 11, 2009
In a recent article that appeared on the Daily Telegraph (Publisher: Time to Pay Up, Google), it became immediately obvious why news agencies the world over are dying on the vine. They are run by idiots who have no idea how modern technology works.
Referring to search engines that spider news sites and provide users with links back to the articles encountered, APN News & Media chief executive Brendan Hopkins made the following claim:
To use an analogy, I see search engines as breaking into our homes, itemising the contents, walking out and listing everything for everyone to see. And they get money out of that process.
Breaking into our homes? If you are referring to your website, kind sir, your home is not only "unlocked" but it has no walls. The contents are exposed to whomever walks by. That is how the Internet works. Your site is supported by the amount of traffic it can generate. Charging for access has never worked for news agencies on the Internet. And for all the bitching about Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that Mr. Hopkins does, his site would be DOA without search engines directing folks there.
Mr. Hopkins, I would suggest you learn how the Internet works and then be grateful that the search engines are helping to generate the traffic you do receive. You shouldn't expect to receive compensation for them helping to bring people to your site any more than a tourist attraction would expect to get a portion of a the local tour guide's revenue stream simply because he tells tourists about the attraction and charges them a few bucks to bring them there.
You start pulling crap like this, and the tour guide will find other attractions to which he'll take his clients. Think about that. Google (or any other search engine) doesn't need AP to stay in business, but the opposite cannot be said. AP would die overnight if the search engines decided that other news organizations were better suited to their needs.
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