[pgeorgi]

The best thing about their press release[0] is that within a couple of sentences they a) complain that they'd lose seven-digits in advertising a year per brand over the short listing on Google news and resulting decrease in traffic, b) demand that Google pays them for the Google news interaction.

[0] http://www.axelspringer.de/presse/Axel-Springer-schliesst-Da...

[ganomi]

Maybe they will take this to the Federal Cartel Office now: "See, Google has such a large impact on our revenue, they are a monopoly." Of course the "Leistungsschutzrecht" has been ridiculous from the start but it might help them to prove their point to take it further.

[pgeorgi]

But it's hard to argue, even with a monopoly, that someone whose free service benefits you in the millions has to pay for that privilege.

[psykovsky]

Because google could exist without content to index...

[shiven]

Because google could exist without their content to index...

On one hand they whine about Google's power and on the other they want the benefits too? Might as well complain about the enormous power of gravity over us and legislate it away.

[nevi-me]

Google should just cut the hosepipe, and let's see what happens. Though that's wishful thinking as it would be a political move bound to end up leaving a mess everywhere

[lotu]

I don't think google news even has any ads so Google theoretically isn't even making any money off of it.

[dhimes]

From the article:

Doepfner said the resulting dramatic drop in traffic to his company's publications was proof of Google's overwhelming power in the search market. He said he hoped lawmakers, courts and competition regulators would take action to curb its powers.

"Others will have to pick up the ball now," the Springer boss told reporters on a conference call following the publication of the Berlin-based company's quarterly results.

So indeed it sounds like that's exactly what they are saying.

[uniformlyrandom]

The question is, how much does Google make, a year, from its news aggregator pages?

I bet it is more than Bild does.

If nobody allowed Google to do the snippets, Google's news business would sink. But since they cannot pass the copyright law for the entire world, Google's business is less affected by the ban. Because it is a monopoly.

Shit, these guys have a point.

[nevi-me]

I see it from a different angle. Google has invested in creating both Google News, and search in general. Yes, Google's business would sink if nobody allowed it to do snippets, but it's also not in their interest to do that.

Let's go to extremes and say that everyone the world over blocks Google from indexing and aggregating their news sites. That means that smaller players can enter the market, but if the blocking is based on principle; then those smaller players would have to invest in infrastructure, IP, and still have to pay publishers! Then publishers then also lose out.

From reading the article, it seems like the company is saying we're shooting ourselves in the foot by blocking Google, yet we still want to piss in our revenue fountain.

[fwn]

Ok, Google will face less damage than a possible publisher cartel. That's probably true.

But how is that supposed to 1. justify Google as a monopolist 2. legitimize the cartels rent seeking ambitions and 3. make that "a point"?

[kevin_thibedeau]

Google doesn't have ads on the news subdomain. They only make money indirectly by driving traffic to publishers who are Doubleclick customers and adding new behavioral data to the profiles of logged in users.