Archive for the ‘William Dean Singleton’ Category

Associated Press CEO Tom Curley Threatens Google Over Syndication

Amit Chowdhry | May 1, 2009 | 482 views | Comments
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“They will not get our copy going forward,” stated Associated Press CEO Tom Curley.

Tom Curley wants Google to strike a proper deal with the Associated Press going forward otherwise they plan to cut off the search engine company from their articles.  These remarks may be a follow-up to legal actions that William Dean Singleton mentioned earlier.

The company said that they are planning to create landing pages that redirect users away from secondary sources that post original content from the Associated Press.

The Associated Press is owned by several news organizations.  The Associated Press is paid undisclosed sums of money from Google for spreading their content across Google News.  However many other blogs and news websites simply steal content from the A.P. and spread it on their website which can be found on Google News itself too.

[via Forbes]

Ads Find Their Way On News.Google.Com

Amit Chowdhry | February 27, 2009 | 478 views | Comments
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Yesterday Google announced that they will be placing ads on Google News’ search results in the U.S.  This means if you search for keywords such as the iPhone or the Kindle, you will notice results for sponsored links from websites such as BlackBerry.com, att.com, Amazon.com, and SonyStyle.com.

“We’ve always said that we’d unveil these changes when we could offer a good experience for our users, publishers and advertisers alike, and we’ll continue to look at ways to deliver ads that are relevant for users and good for publishers, too,” stated Josh Cohen on the Google News Blog.

Google was debating whether to put ads on news.google.com for about 6 years.  They were skeptical before because of criticism from newspaper publishers.  Content from Google News is aggregated from various blogs and online newspapers.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has reiterated that the search engine company is a friend of newspaper publishers.  Google’s own Adwords and AdSense business depends on newspaper publishers and other content publishers.

“When Eric Schmidt says he worries about the newspaper industry, it’s crocodile tears,” stated Brian Tierney CEO of the parent company for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News.

William Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group has a difference of opinion with Tierney.  MediaNews is the parent company of about 54 daily newspapers including the San Jose Mercury NEws and The Denver Post.  He says that newspaper companies don’t have to let Google take content, but opt to do so because it drives traffic.

Reuters says that they will be watching Google News closely as they don’t have any licensing agreement with them.  “We are certainly not surprised by the move, which places Google News in a position to compete with news publishers — giving us cause for concern,” stated Alisa Bowen, SVP for Reuters.

[via New York Times]