Cuban: Google is Bad for the Newspaper Business
1-liner, Media Gossip/Musings February 5th. 2010, 12:20pmCuban on Google News: “When that newspaper allows itself to be included in Google News it becomes a de facto endorsement of Google News as an acceptable and probably preferable “discovery destination” . The branding message to the consumer is “I dont need to go to the newspaper homepage. Everything the newspaper has is referenced here in Google News. So if there is something of interest to me from the local paper, Google News will send me to their site. I don’t need to go to both sites any longer. I can just go to Google News…As a newspaper or other information source, you can never discount the very real possibility that Google starts becoming a content creator. Why couldn’t they hire reporters ? Why couldn’t they give their content priority over all others ? More importantly, why wouldn’t they ?” (blogmaverick)
19 Responses to “Cuban: Google is Bad for the Newspaper Business”
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February 5th, 2010 at 12:23 PM
I would listen to the man. He has a valid point.
He didn’t become a billionaire by being an idiot.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:25 PM
My roommate works at Google. One look at the scooters and all the free food and journalists would be tearing down the building trying to get in and work there if they decided to produce their own content.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:26 PM
Dont they also have beer Fridays and a kick ass rec room?
February 5th, 2010 at 12:29 PM
your roommate has a dream job.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:29 PM
If the newspapers are smart they won’t make all of their content accessible through Google News.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:31 PM
isn’t that what NewsCorp is trying to do?
February 5th, 2010 at 12:31 PM
cia runs google
/ridiculous things i have heard
February 5th, 2010 at 12:32 PM
My roommate works at Google.
I thought people who worked at google lived in the clouds consuming only nectar and ambrosia
February 5th, 2010 at 12:32 PM
isn’t that what NewsCorp is trying to do?
Not sure, but Rupert Murdoch also is not an idiot, so it wouldn’t surprise me.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:33 PM
@ms621: that seems like the brightest solution for them. make some content available, and in the meantime, get together with other newspapers and try to come up with some other way to get your way on the internet w/o using Google.
it would be interesting to see if papers like The Boston Globe, LA Times, NY Times, the Chicago papers and a few others in the country worked together to create a single online news source that could rival google and yahoo, etc.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:33 PM
AOL (I think) had a snippet of the questions Google asks potential employees. I consider myself educated (to a point – always learning) but holy fuck did I feel like the worlds loneliest retard trying to figure those out.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:35 PM
it would be interesting to see if papers like The Boston Globe, LA Times, NY Times, the Chicago papers and a few others in the country worked together to create a single online news source that could rival google and yahoo, etc
I read recently that NY Times is actually about to go back to charging for some ‘premium’ services. I don’t know the details of it, but it always seemed inevitable to me.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:37 PM
yeah, it’s a silly idea. in my perfect solution, it would be free and they’d make their money from advertising. newspapers would be saved, i’d make money hand over fist and i can retire early to travel across the world to take wonderful photographs and start a blog, which would then rise up and kill the newspapers.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:39 PM
It’s points like these that make me glad I’m out of newspapers FOR-E-VVVER. /Sandlot voice
Cuban is rounding third and headed home with this post.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:41 PM
There are too many hands in the pie and the pie is getting smaller. Newspapers have the weakest hands.
/analogy’d or something
February 5th, 2010 at 12:42 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11
February 5th, 2010 at 12:43 PM
yeah, it’s a silly idea. in my perfect solution, it would be free and they’d make their money from advertising. newspapers would be saved, i’d make money hand over fist and i can retire early to travel across the world to take wonderful photographs and start a blog, which would then rise up and kill the newspapers.
Unfortunately the current model doesn’t provide enough revenue solely from advertising, that’s why anyone who argues that newspapers can survive in both print and internet formats is wrong. Now if advertising rates on the internet were to rise it might be a different story. But as it is, we’ve seen several newspapers close up shop around the country and others forced to make choice between either being solely print or solely electronic. Every single one that stayed in business so far, like the Seattle Times, has chosen to be 100% electronic and sold their printing presses. Because choosing to be 100% print would be like choosing a Model T over a 2010 BMW.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:45 PM
I thought continuing to keep “writers” like Jay Mariotti was newspapers’ problem.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:11 PM
Trying to figure them out? Seems to me that no “right” answer exists to these.
/not trying to be a smart ass