5 ms·

Germany's top publisher bows to Google in news licensing row

44 points by BogdanCalin 12y ago

hellrich 12y ago
Wanting to force someone to advertise your product and charge him for it sounds so backwards, especially from a right-wing company. I'm happy this terrible excuse for a publisher couldn't get through with it. Will be interesting to see the Bild headlines about it, at the moment they are still busy rallying against unions (e.g. by printing the phone numbers of union leaders).
- mironathetin 12y ago
  Springer and especially Bild are famous for hounding everybody who is not nice to them. Lets see what they do with Google now :o). Will be fun to watch Google presenting those headlines in the search results. And I agree, it is a ridiculous fight and Springer is more to blame than Google in this case. But, that's what happens in saturated markets. Its business.
- thirdsun 12y ago
  I've been following this Leistungsschutzrecht development for a long time now and I still can't believe how ridiculous it is or that the law actual passed. Now, after taking a step back, failing to force Google to pay for providing a service that is much more beneficial to Springer than it is to Google, Bild and Springer try to paint a picture that displays them as the victims in this issue, being bullied by big old Google. It gets more absurd by the day. Also, this right only applies to Google - if you're DuckDuckGo or any other search engine you're still not allowed to show snippets from Springer media. So they are complaining about Google's market dominating position by strengthening it? Utterly absurd.
- uniformlyrandom 12y ago
  To play the devil's advocate: - Bild makes money from the online visits. - Google makes money form the online visits as well. - Bild actually provides content for Google to generate that revenue. Why should not Google pay for the content (a percentage of ad revenue generated by the news.google.com would do nicely)?
  - Retric 12y ago
    You’re forgetting Google is a global company. If they get a specific tax on content their simply going to drop the market to avoid such taxes spreading. They might even simply decide to avoid doing business in Germany entirely. Net result a worse compeditor shows up discuraging users and Bild loses even more money.
  - Sven7 12y ago
    Does Google News generate revenue? I
  - fwn 12y ago
    They don't want Google to be able to buy it. They want Google to be forced to buy it. If you took ice cream for free that doesn't give anyone the right to force you to buy it.
fwn 12y ago
Since Google et al will always get exceptions from publishers, the Leistungsschutzrecht will primarily hurt small companies and start-ups through its newly embedded legal uncertainty. Little business without a lobby in Germany..
pgeorgi 12y ago
The best thing about their press release[0] is that within a couple of sentences they a) complain that they'd lose seven-digits in advertising a year per brand over the short listing on Google news and resulting decrease in traffic, b) demand that Google pays them for the Google news interaction. [0] http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-Datendokumentation-ab-Gravierender-Schaden-durch-verschlechterte-Suchanzeigen-bei-Google_22070688.html http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-Da...
- ganomi 12y ago
  Maybe they will take this to the Federal Cartel Office now: "See, Google has such a large impact on our revenue, they are a monopoly." Of course the "Leistungsschutzrecht" has been ridiculous from the start but it might help them to prove their point to take it further.
  - pgeorgi 12y ago
    But it's hard to argue, even with a monopoly, that someone whose free service benefits you in the millions has to pay for that privilege.
    - psykovsky 12y ago
      Because google could exist without content to index...
      - shiven 12y ago
        Because google could exist without their content to index... On one hand they whine about Google's power and on the other they want the benefits too? Might as well complain about the enormous power of gravity over us and legislate it away.
        nevi-me 12y ago
        Google should just cut the hosepipe, and let's see what happens. Though that's wishful thinking as it would be a political move bound to end up leaving a mess everywhere
simonh 12y ago
I think the point here is being missed a bit. Yes they get a lot of benefit from traffic coming from Google. The point is they want that traffic coming directly to them. If people go to Google News they see traffic from other alternative news sources as well. These people are Google News users and sometimes see e.g. Die Welt content, but Die Welt wants them to be Die Welt users. The publishers are used to having a direct relationship with their readers, they don't want to be competing with news clips and links from budget internet news sites and blog aggregators. What's most interesting is that they have their own Facebook pages. So these guys are choosing to use Facebook for free to promote their brand, with pictures and excerpts from their articles. The thing there is that a relationship through Facebook can be more direct. The Facebook page is really an extension of the Die Welt web site, bringing it closer to Facebook users and trying to built that relationship. There's no way to do that through Google News. Now, I do agree they're going about their relationship with Google in a bone headed and self-harming way. However they are doing it for what appear to them to be valid reasons. That's why papers and magazines always preferred direct subscriptions to sales on news stands. If they could have locked news stands into exclusive relationships, they would have. So I think we can expect to see more initiatives like this from these publishers. Right now they're flailing around blindly and making fools of themselves, but they are not going to give up on their actual goals and eventually are likely to get smart about it. It'll be interesting to see what that looks like, but I doubt any effective initiatives they may come up with will be to the benefit of news consumers.
- trvz 12y ago
  This is not about customer-middleman-publisher relationships, but the publishers wanting Google to advertise their crap and pay them for it, based on the false claim that the excerpts in the advertisement have copyrightable value; they don't.
- mankyd 12y ago
  > The point is they want that traffic coming directly to them. Very insightful and true. The problem is that they can't find a strategy to make this happen and are capitulating due to their lack of ability. That is to say, _if_ they could find a way to make aggregator customers instead into their customers, they wouldn't be backing down. What they're discovering, however, is that, even if they weaken Google, they don't strengthen themselves in the process. Readers simply turn to other sources. This implies that readers perhaps don't value Axel Springer's content over other news sources. Or, at least, they don't value it over the value of aggregators.

44 points by BogdanCalin 12y ago

Wanting to force someone to advertise your product and charge him for it sounds so backwards, especially from a right-wing company. I'm happy this terrible excuse for a publisher couldn't get through with it. Will be interesting to see the Bild headlines about it, at the moment they are still busy rallying against unions (e.g. by printing the phone numbers of union leaders).

mironathetin 12y ago
Springer and especially Bild are famous for hounding everybody who is not nice to them. Lets see what they do with Google now :o). Will be fun to watch Google presenting those headlines in the search results. And I agree, it is a ridiculous fight and Springer is more to blame than Google in this case. But, that's what happens in saturated markets. Its business.
thirdsun 12y ago
I've been following this Leistungsschutzrecht development for a long time now and I still can't believe how ridiculous it is or that the law actual passed. Now, after taking a step back, failing to force Google to pay for providing a service that is much more beneficial to Springer than it is to Google, Bild and Springer try to paint a picture that displays them as the victims in this issue, being bullied by big old Google. It gets more absurd by the day. Also, this right only applies to Google - if you're DuckDuckGo or any other search engine you're still not allowed to show snippets from Springer media. So they are complaining about Google's market dominating position by strengthening it? Utterly absurd.
uniformlyrandom 12y ago
To play the devil's advocate: - Bild makes money from the online visits. - Google makes money form the online visits as well. - Bild actually provides content for Google to generate that revenue. Why should not Google pay for the content (a percentage of ad revenue generated by the news.google.com would do nicely)?
- Retric 12y ago
  You’re forgetting Google is a global company. If they get a specific tax on content their simply going to drop the market to avoid such taxes spreading. They might even simply decide to avoid doing business in Germany entirely. Net result a worse compeditor shows up discuraging users and Bild loses even more money.
- Sven7 12y ago
  Does Google News generate revenue? I
- fwn 12y ago
  They don't want Google to be able to buy it. They want Google to be forced to buy it. If you took ice cream for free that doesn't give anyone the right to force you to buy it.

fwn 12y ago

Since Google et al will always get exceptions from publishers, the Leistungsschutzrecht will primarily hurt small companies and start-ups through its newly embedded legal uncertainty. Little business without a lobby in Germany..

pgeorgi 12y ago

The best thing about their press release[0] is that within a couple of sentences they a) complain that they'd lose seven-digits in advertising a year per brand over the short listing on Google news and resulting decrease in traffic, b) demand that Google pays them for the Google news interaction. [0] http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-Datendokumentation-ab-Gravierender-Schaden-durch-verschlechterte-Suchanzeigen-bei-Google_22070688.html http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-Da...

ganomi 12y ago
Maybe they will take this to the Federal Cartel Office now: "See, Google has such a large impact on our revenue, they are a monopoly." Of course the "Leistungsschutzrecht" has been ridiculous from the start but it might help them to prove their point to take it further.
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  But it's hard to argue, even with a monopoly, that someone whose free service benefits you in the millions has to pay for that privilege.
  - psykovsky 12y ago
    Because google could exist without content to index...
    - shiven 12y ago
      Because google could exist without their content to index... On one hand they whine about Google's power and on the other they want the benefits too? Might as well complain about the enormous power of gravity over us and legislate it away.
      - nevi-me 12y ago
        Google should just cut the hosepipe, and let's see what happens. Though that's wishful thinking as it would be a political move bound to end up leaving a mess everywhere

simonh 12y ago

I think the point here is being missed a bit. Yes they get a lot of benefit from traffic coming from Google. The point is they want that traffic coming directly to them. If people go to Google News they see traffic from other alternative news sources as well. These people are Google News users and sometimes see e.g. Die Welt content, but Die Welt wants them to be Die Welt users. The publishers are used to having a direct relationship with their readers, they don't want to be competing with news clips and links from budget internet news sites and blog aggregators. What's most interesting is that they have their own Facebook pages. So these guys are choosing to use Facebook for free to promote their brand, with pictures and excerpts from their articles. The thing there is that a relationship through Facebook can be more direct. The Facebook page is really an extension of the Die Welt web site, bringing it closer to Facebook users and trying to built that relationship. There's no way to do that through Google News. Now, I do agree they're going about their relationship with Google in a bone headed and self-harming way. However they are doing it for what appear to them to be valid reasons. That's why papers and magazines always preferred direct subscriptions to sales on news stands. If they could have locked news stands into exclusive relationships, they would have. So I think we can expect to see more initiatives like this from these publishers. Right now they're flailing around blindly and making fools of themselves, but they are not going to give up on their actual goals and eventually are likely to get smart about it. It'll be interesting to see what that looks like, but I doubt any effective initiatives they may come up with will be to the benefit of news consumers.

trvz 12y ago
This is not about customer-middleman-publisher relationships, but the publishers wanting Google to advertise their crap and pay them for it, based on the false claim that the excerpts in the advertisement have copyrightable value; they don't.
mankyd 12y ago
> The point is they want that traffic coming directly to them. Very insightful and true. The problem is that they can't find a strategy to make this happen and are capitulating due to their lack of ability. That is to say, _if_ they could find a way to make aggregator customers instead into their customers, they wouldn't be backing down. What they're discovering, however, is that, even if they weaken Google, they don't strengthen themselves in the process. Readers simply turn to other sources. This implies that readers perhaps don't value Axel Springer's content over other news sources. Or, at least, they don't value it over the value of aggregators.