Google News

Eric Kallgren    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 4:52pm on Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Google has dropped the idea of buying a newspaper company, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Chrystia Freeland reported in the Financial Times on May 20, 2009:

"Google has considered buying a newspaper or using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status, but is now unlikely to pursue either option, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive, told the Financial Times.

His comments, in an interview with FT.com, will cool speculation that the deep-pocketed search engine operator might save franchises such as the New York Times that are struggling with debts and declining advertising revenue.

Google had looked at buying a newspaper but was “trying to avoid crossing the line” between technology and content, Mr Schmidt said. It was instead working with publishers to make their websites “work better” for online advertising."

The full story:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2252e92c-4569-11de-b6c8-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:53pm on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked about how web sites (in particular newspaper web sites) are ranked in Google and Google News when he participated in a brief question and answer session following his speech at the Newspaper Association of America convention on April 7, 2009:

Q: Is there a way to look at search and when you search on a particular topic, that news organizations with credible brands, that somehow the algorithm could be tweaked to reflect that, not only for the benefit of the publishers, but for the users?

Eric Schmidt: "We actually do that in the case of Google News. Google News uses a relatively fixed set of sources which are selected based on exactly the kind of trust that you're describing. So the answer to your question is yes on Google News.

For general search, we've been careful not to bias it using our own judgment of trust because we're never sure if we get it right. So we use complicated ranking signals, as they're called, to determine rank and relevance. And we change them periodically, which drives everybody crazy, as or algorithms get better. There's no question in my experience that the top brands represented in this room would, in fact, float to the top in our search ranking. The usual problem is you've got somebody who really is very trustworthy but they're not as well-known and they compete against people who are better known, and they don't, in their view, get high enough ranking. We have not come up with a way to algorithmically handle that in a coherent way. But we're very sensitive to not do that on search we don't want to do the kind of thing you're describing unless we can do it across the board and for all categories of trusted institutions, not just newspapers."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 2:14pm on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

February 25, 2009: As of today, Google is now showing ads at Google News. The Google AdWords program displays text ads alongside news searches in much the same way it does regular Google searches.

Google announced the change in a post to its official blog:

"In recent months we’ve been experimenting with a variety of different formats, like overlay ads on embedded videos from partners like the AP. 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."

It remains to be seen how the newspaper industry will react to this change. In the past a number of news organizations have sued Google claiming violation of copyright (Agence France Press in 2005, and the World Association of Newspapers in 2006).

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:02pm on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

On January 20, 2009, Editor & Publisher magazine reported that Google is ending its print ad program for newspapers:

"Google Inc. said Tuesday it will stop offering the Print Ads program that solicited advertisements for more than 800 newspapers.

"While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we -- or our partners -- wanted," Spencer Spinnell, the director of Google Print Ads wrote in a company blog posting.

"As a result, we will stop offering Print Ads on February 28," Spinnell wrote. "For advertisers who have campaigns already booked, we will place their ads through March 31."

Through Print Ads, advertisers using search criteria could make an offer for an ad, and get a response or counter-offer from the newspaper. Most of the revenue generated is kept by the newspaper.

Google launched Print Ads in November 2006 with 50 newspapers. The network had expanded to more than 800 U.S. papers, Spinnell said.

Google wants to continue to partner with newspapers, Spinnell said."