Mark Cuban Updates His Stance on Google

Update: Cuban has now posted a lengthy explanation of his stance on Google. Essentially, he appears to view Google as helpful if not necesary for lesser known brands, but as a bad business decision for big names in the news industry.

Oriinal Article: The always outspoken Mark Cuban has contributed his thoughts on the whole news aggregation/Google News/publisher debate, one that is most often credited to Rupert Murdoch. It appears that Cuban has a similar opinion on the matter.

Cuban spoke at a keynote address this week at the AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC 2010 Conference, and is quoted by numerous sources as calling Google in particular a "vampire."

"When you think about vampires, they just suck on your blood," he is quoted as saying, reportedly telling newspapers and other publishers to "show some balls" and block Google News and, "There's absolutely no reason for you guys to be indexed on Google News ... if they don't pay you."

Michael Arrington points out that at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2008, Cuban said he'd like to be an investor in TechMeme, which provides a similar service to Google News and other aggregators. In addition, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land notes (in great detail) that Cuban is an investor in Mahalo, which actually "touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views."

While on the topic of the news industry debates, the topic of charging for news is always a conversation starter. The Wall Street Journal has taken down its pay wall for the day, giving users access to articles that would otherwise require a subscription to access. The effort comes as the result of a sponsorship from Acura (Via SIA).
 

Have You Read This?

> News Corp. Blocks Content from News Aggregation Site

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Murdoch's War with the Aggregators

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

Minds of the Media Gather to Discuss Future of News

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a 2-day workshop on "Journalism and the Internet Age" today and tomorrow. Featured at the event are a number of high profile media executives and gurus. The cast ranges from News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington.

The event appears to be designed to present all possible angles regarding the state of the news industry and the web's role, as well as the government's role, if any. Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, who is appearing on a panel at the event himself, has a liveblog running, covering much of the discussion (and there is a lot of it), providing a good source for actual quotes.

The newspaper industry is obviously struggling right now, and a common theme discussed throughout the workshop has been that the effects of the recession may be skewing the long term view. In other words, maybe it's not really as bad as it seems right now.

That said, publications clearly have to adapt to the online lifestyles of readers, whether that means the death of print newspapers or not. Let's look at comments made by Murdoch and Huffington, because they basically represent opposing sides of the spectrum on a number of sub-topics to this discussion (Although to be fair, it's probably not as black and white as that. There is certainly a lot of gray area in the discussion, which has been going on for years).

Murdoch says three things have to happen: media companies have to deliver the news consumers want in ways that meet their lifestyles and must innovate like never before, they have to convince consumers that good journalism isn't free, and the government needs to "clear obstacles."

Murdoch goes on to discuss other related topics, including that of fair use. He rips aggregators, calling aggregation "wholesale theft."

Huffington, whose site is largely known for aggregating content, says Murdoch is confusing aggregation with theft, but says they link to the Wall Street Journal every day and never get a complaint. She says that if it was wrong, they'd have heard about it. She also says aggregation is part of the web's "DNA" and that Murdoch plays both sides, noting that some of Murdoch's own sites also aggregate or "steal" content.

Huffington also discusses things like social and collaborative news, and the concept of citizen journalism.

There are many other speakers and opinions being voiced at the FTC's event, and Sullivan's liveblog captures a great deal of them. It will be interesting to see if the event leads to any significant progress in the ongoing discussion.

On a related note, Google has posted about the ways it is focusing on helping news publishers gain traffic, engage audiences, and increase revenue.


Have You Read This?

> Obvious: People Don't Want to Pay for Online News

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

Google Introduces Multi-Client Accounts for Product Search

Google has introduced some new policies for marketplaces and aggregators on Google Product Search. They have also introduced multi-client accounts to help aggregators and marketplaces manage feeds for multiple sellers under a single account.

"By allowing marketplaces better control over their sellers' product data, shoppers get more accurate and relevant information when they search for things to buy on Product Search, and individual sellers don't need to submit their own feeds," says Paul Lee, Business Product Manager for Google Product Search. "The multi-client accounts allow aggregators and marketplaces to consolidate and manage data feeds and reporting for sub-accounts, submit changes more rapidly, and get more accurate Google Checkout badging at the seller level."

Starting December 1, Marketplaces and aggregators will be required to use multi-client accounts to submit and manager their sellers' feeds. The new policies for marketplaces and aggregators can be found here.

Google also retired the "one at a time" upload option on Google Base. Those who have been using that are encouraged to submit through a data feed.

"For those providers who want Google to host a page for their item - for example, if you don't have a website - just submit your data feed without anything in the "link" attribute, and we'll create a Google Base page for your item," says Google Base Product Manager Ioannis Kalafatis.

They have made it easier to link Google Base accounts to Google Checkout. There's a new page in the "settings" tab called "Checkout," where you can add accounts to Checkout by entering a Checkout Merchant ID.

Understanding AdSense for feeds

Google AdSense program offers more than one way of earning revenue from serving Google AdSense Ads. Though ‘AdSense for Feeds’ is one of the more recent ways of advertising using Google AdSense Ads, it’s in no way less effective than the others. Here, Google places the Ads of the advertisers in the relevant feed articles (again, note the most important characteristic of the Google AdSense program comes into play here too i.e. ‘relevant feed’ not just any feed).

The feeds are in the form of articles, headlines or summaries. These content formats allow the users to easily access the content from several publishers (content owners) at one place. This is achieved through feed aggregators like Bloglines etc. Again, Google uses its technology to determine what advertisements would be contextually suited for a particular feed. You get paid as the publisher of original content and hence make easy money. As for the readers, they as such get a rich experience because they can see the relevant advertisements with the content that they are interested in. Moreover, they can also choose the feeds that they want. Users can click the advertisements to visit the advertiser’s website and check if their products and/ or services are of any use to them. Of course, the Advertisers benefit too. They get targeted advertising which means only the really interested people get to know about their products and services (and hence there are more chances of a better conversion rate for sales).

So, the prime concept for ‘AdSense for feeds’ remains the same as the Google AdSense program; only the orientation changes a bit. But note that Google is currently beta testing ‘AdSense for feeds’. Beta test for the program quickly got fully subscribed, so Google is not accepting any more applications for AdSense for feeds.

It’s only a matter of time before Google AdSense for feeds hits the internet and opens another revenue earning opportunity for website owners.

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