Italian Newspapers Get Gov't To Investigate Google For Not Sharing Ranking Secret Sauce

from the seriously-delusional dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in the news that Italian regulators have begun an investigation into Google, at the request of some Italian newspapers. The complaint is a typical one from newspapers who seem slightly clueless about how Google works. They say that Google News is unfair -- even though they can opt-out, but don't. The newspapers falsely claim that if they opt-out of Google News, they also have to opt-out of Google Search. That's simply untrue. But even if it were true, I'm not sure what the point would be. Getting traffic is a good thing. It's unclear why Italian newspapers (or any newspapers) don't like it.

In fact, the whole idea that Google News is unfair for sending traffic is undermined by the other complaint from the newspapers: that Google doesn't reveal how it ranks stories:

Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising.

Of course, that's silly. First, plenty of people have figured out how to optimize for Google -- there's a whole industry called SEO that does that. That doesn't mean that Google needs to reveal the secret sauce. But the best response to the demand for Google to reveal how it ranks stories comes from Danny Sullivan, who turns the story around, and wonders how newspaper would feel in the other direction:

No newspaper editor of any quality would allow an external interest to walk into their newsroom and demand to know exactly how to guarantee a front page article about whatever they want. But that's what the Italian papers seem to desire. Google has an editorial process for producing rankings, one that's done using automation -- but the papers seem to want to bypass those editorial decisions.

Exactly. The newspapers are basically demanding that their stories get ranked higher, but how would newspaper editors feel about the subjects of stories in the paper demanding that their stories be on the front page. After all, being on the front page would get the subject of a story more attention, and the newspaper isn't paying those subjects -- so the newspaper is "getting all the value." -- at least according to newspaper logic.

Sullivan also does a good job highlighting how useless it would be if the newspapers did get the details on how Google ranks stuff, because then everyone would just start writing stories to get to the top of the list, and any "advantage" would be lost. Separate from that, shouldn't we be just a bit troubled to find out that the newspapers are interested in figuring out how to write stories that top Google, rather than writing stories to better inform the populace?

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Guardian Asks UK Gov't To Investigate Google News For Not Contributing To Journalism?

from the wrong-target dept

It had seemed like perhaps The Guardian newspaper in the UK understood how the internet worked. After all, execs there had been saying that they hoped the NYTimes would start charging, since it would just drive a lot more traffic their way. However, it seems like not everyone at The Guardian is on the same page. Similar to Feargal Sharkey's call demand that the UK government investigate Google for not giving the recording industry money, The Guardian is now asking the UK government to investigate Google over its Google News product, specifically claiming that Google gets too much benefit from its content. Of course, there's a simple solution to this: take your news off of Google News (or take it offline altogether). But The Guardian doesn't want to do that.

The reasoning is a bit convoluted, but, basically The Guardian says that since the online ad market is tough right now, it can't make enough money on the traffic that Google sends it. So stop accepting traffic from Google, right? No, it can't do that, because then competitors like the BBC would sweep up all of the traffic.

Is it just me, or does this reasoning suggest that The Guardian should be asking the government not to investigate Google News, but the BBC for representing unfair competition? The Guardian's reasoning here is a bit tortured. It seems to be saying it can't compete with other sources due to Google News... even though those other sources have the exact same issue (getting traffic from Google News). It's only real complaint is that the BBC offers its content for free online -- and (though it doesn't appear to explicitly call this out), the BBC is publicly funded and doesn't have to focus on ad revenue like The Guardian does. So why isn't the complaint against the BBC instead of Google News?

The Guardian always struck me as a pretty good paper, but the logic here is hard to understand. If it doesn't want the traffic, fine, don't take it (though, most people recognize that would be a mistake). If the problem is that it can't monetize the content effectively, then that's a business model problem for The Guardian -- not Google News. Finally, if the problem is (as it appears) competition from the BBC, then take it up with the BBC or those who fund it, but don't misplace the blame on Google News.

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United Airlines Shares Plummet 75% On Misinformation; Blame Game Begins

from the if-it's-on-the-internet-it-must-be-true dept

Shares of United Airlines' stock tumbled nearly 75% on Monday after an old 2002 report about a United Airlines bankruptcy filing was picked up and circulated as current. How did this happen? Apparently, a staffer at Income Securities Advisors Inc. did a search for "united bankruptcy 2008" on Google, and found an article on the Sun-Sentinel. Though the article was published in 2002, neither the Googlebot nor the Sun-Sentinel website indicated as much, and the news item was published to Income Securities' page on Bloomberg. Once the story hit the wire, shares plummeted from $12 to as low as $3, and 54 million shares traded hands before Nasdaq halted trading to investigate what was going on. After United issued an official "we're really not bankrupt" statement and the confusion started to lift, shares of United returned to a somewhat normal price.

After all the dust has settled, the finger pointing has now begun. Who is to blame, if anyone? Sure, the Sun-Sentinel published the story on its site with an ambiguous date, but having archived articles on your site isn't a problem. However, they should really make the dates on their articles more obvious, since they apparently have pretty good SEO. As for Google, they are indeed guilty of publishing an inaccurate date, but as we've seen before, their usual recourse is to blame the site for the problem, and, that said, their terms of service clearly state that they are not liable for the accuracy of their data. As for Income Securities and Bloomberg, perhaps they will be more careful next time before they publish stories, or perhaps not. The thing is, mistakes happen (like Bloomberg publishing Steve Jobs' obituary last month) and rumors turn out to be false every day. Income Securities will "pay" for their mistake, since now they will need to earn back the trust of their clients.

For stock traders, timely information translates into moneymaking opportunities. A few decades ago, it would take a few days for the market to react to information (thereby creating a nice opportunity for the shrewd trader). Today, the speed with which information travels (and the market reacts) has increased considerably, as is clearly illustrated by this event. Sure, shares of United are still trading at approximately 10% less than its opening price on Monday, but perhaps that's more a reflection of the fact that a chapter 11 filing would not come as a surprise to anyone at this time. So, it appears that, in actuality, it's pointless to assign blame, since there doesn't seem to be a problem -- the system worked just as it should.

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Conspiracy Theory About Google In League With UN Corruption Doesn't Pass The Sniff Test

from the um,-please dept

It's no secret that people are fairly opinionated (one way or the other) about Fox News. I'm not going to weigh in on that debate, other than to note that there's a bizarre story making the rounds on FoxNews.com claiming that Google made a journalist "disappear" from Google due to his efforts to expose UN corruption. The problem is that this is simply untrue, and any basic fact checking by the Fox reporter would have made that clear. The guy in question wasn't removed from Google, but from Google News, which the search engine is quite clear is only a hand-chosen collection of publications, which the company reviews regularly. For better or for worse (and I actually tend to think for worse), Google has set some rules in terms of what types of sources can appear in Google News -- and this guy's site did not appear to qualify, hence the site getting bounced from the Google News index (not the wider Google). However, when people complained, and the guy provided proof that his organization might actually meet Google's standards, Google News agreed to put it back in the index. In other words, there's no story here. It has nothing to do with his reporting on UN corruption or Google's political views. It's certainly unlikely that the UN asked Google to remove him (as the guy implies). It's nice to cook up some conspiracy theory, but there's nothing to support the charges here. The Fox article does lay out some of these details at the end of the article, but the headline and opening certainly make you think that Google vindictively removed this guy from its index to punish him for exposing UN corruption.

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Google Resorting To Begging To Get Folks To Comment On The News?

from the not-working-so-well,-huh? dept

It was a bit surprising when Google launched its feature for Google News that would allow those in a news story to comment on the story directly on Google News. After all, wouldn't that just invite abuse? Google would have to make such an effort to make sure that the real people were the ones who wanted to comment that it would easily outweigh any benefit to offering the feature. Even more important, though, is that there's hardly any lack of outlets for anyone who wants to get "their side of the story" out. You certainly don't need Google News. It's not hard to set up your own website or blog and give your side of the story these days. Hell, Google has it's own tools to help you do both of those things already. The NY Times is now checking in on the Google News program almost five months after it launched and apparently the real issue is that no one seems to care about the offering at all. Google has to proactively contact people in various news stories and beg them to comment on Google News, and even then only a very small number of people are doing so. At any one time, there are only around 140 to 150 comments on all of Google News, suggesting that the program is barely used at all. It seems that Google would get better results figuring out how to tie an individual's blog or personal website to a story, rather than begging them to comment directly on Google News.

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Google Finally Hosting News On Its Site: Will Newspapers Get Pissed Off At AP Now?

from the ah,-the-shifting-marketplace dept

Earlier this month, we noted that it had been a year since Google had done a deal with the Associated press and there appeared to be nothing to show for it. That led to speculation that the deal really had nothing to do with with some new "news" product, and it was really about paying off the AP so it didn't sue Google for linking to AP stories (the way some other news organizations had done). That seemed strange because it was quite difficult to see what the Associated Press or anyone else had to argue about if Google News was providing their news partners more traffic. However, the snickering over a lack of any real project seems to have kicked Google into action, and they've just announced that they're going to start hosting news content on their own site from the AP and a few other news organizations the company has done deals with. Amusingly, I was unable to find the AP version of this story hosted on Google itself, but did find the Canadian Press version. There don't appear to be any advertisements on the Google hosted version, but there are links to "related news" -- which makes a lot of sense. Of course, if I were a publisher partner of the Associated Press, I'd actually be really upset by this deal -- but directed at the Associated Press, rather than at Google. This deal is likely to lower traffic to other sites that republish AP reports. So all those partners get no benefit from the deal and actually lose out on traffic. If there are newspapers who want to get upset about Google News, they should get upset at the AP for basically giving a bunch of their traffic directly to Google.

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Google Wants People In The News To Clarify News Reports

from the interesting-ideas dept

There's an old saying about the press, that whenever you're involved in a news story, you can almost guarantee that the press coverage will get the story wrong. It's amazing how true this is -- but it appears that Google News is trying to do something about it. It's launching a new service that will let those who are involved in a particular news story comment on the news coverage on Google News. That is, if there's a story about you, you'll have the opportunity to add your own perspective (or counter any points you disagree with in the news coverage) and have it shown on Google News linked to the relevant news stories. It's an interesting idea, though it has a number of hurdles to overcome. First of all, Google just set themselves up to be besieged by people who want to comment on a story who aren't actually participants (or by people pretending to be part of the story). The hassle of figuring out who's really part of the story isn't going to be easy. In fact, it seems like it would almost definitely be more costly than whatever benefit this might bring. On top of this, Danny Sullivan lays out a number of problems with this idea in the link above, starting with the fact that people already have the ability to post their own thoughts on their own sites. Wouldn't it simply make a lot more sense if Google and its magical algorithm did a better job of associating such responses to the news stories? Still, in an age where Congress still thinks the Fairness Doctrine is needed, here's yet another example of how technology is making sure that everyone has ample opportunity to get "their side" out on any particular story.

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