The World Association of Newspapers has made it official: a lot of newspapers hate Google too.
Like a lot of people in the news business, WAN is irked at how news outfits never see a penny of the ad revenues that companies like Google generate by redistributing their hard work. Maybe it’s finally time for a revenue share deal?
It’s a pretty disruptive idea. Imagine Joe’s News Service charging Google a micro-penny each time its news stories show up in a Google search result, or charging Google just for the right to include Joe’s page in search results.
Multiply that 0.0000001 cents or so by the billions of Web pages Google has already cataloged, and things add up significantly.
Thus, WAN may now be near the top of Google’s enemies list, along with human rights supporters, the U.S. Department of Justice and major U.S. book publishers and authors.
Throw in there book publishing giant HarperCollins too, for good measure. In December, it decided to make online versions of its book off-limits to Internet search engines.
After all, when it rains, it pours.