Comments on: Small earthquake in Belgium, no-one hurt http://www.simonwaldman.net/blog/2007/02/14/small-earthquake-in-belgium-no-one-hurt/ It's all work, work, work Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:54:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.3 by: James Cridland http://www.simonwaldman.net/blog/2007/02/14/small-earthquake-in-belgium-no-one-hurt/#comment-326 Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:27:04 +0000 http://www.simonwaldman.net/blog/2007/02/14/small-earthquake-in-belgium-no-one-hurt/#comment-326 <I>We believe that publishers are of real benefit to search engines because they provide valuable content for them to sell ads against. We also believe that when it comes to a news product - the timely use of even a headline and first par is actually a significant part of a story….but that is another matter.</i> Not sure I follow what your argument is here. Until Google, in order to get traffic to your website, you needed to advertise (and pay some media owner megabucks for the privilege). Now that Google/Yahoo/Live has appeared, you no longer need to pay. Of <i>course</i> they earn money from presenting a small portion of your content, and others, to their visitors. Their product wouldn't deliver you traffic otherwise. But you do retain control. If you strongly believe that your snippets in Google News benefits them more than you, you are entirely welcome to add the little snippet of robots.txt and remove your content from their site. No lawyer needs get bothered. I don't think anyone at Google would disagree with your argument that content on other websites makes Google a better place to be. So, I don't think this is an argument; other than perhaps a deep-seated need for recognition by Mountain View. A reliance on lawyers instead of the application of existing technology and common-sense is what's wrong with so many things today. I know you're cleverer than that. We believe that publishers are of real benefit to search engines because they provide valuable content for them to sell ads against. We also believe that when it comes to a news product - the timely use of even a headline and first par is actually a significant part of a story….but that is another matter.

Not sure I follow what your argument is here.

Until Google, in order to get traffic to your website, you needed to advertise (and pay some media owner megabucks for the privilege). Now that Google/Yahoo/Live has appeared, you no longer need to pay. Of course they earn money from presenting a small portion of your content, and others, to their visitors. Their product wouldn’t deliver you traffic otherwise.

But you do retain control. If you strongly believe that your snippets in Google News benefits them more than you, you are entirely welcome to add the little snippet of robots.txt and remove your content from their site. No lawyer needs get bothered.

I don’t think anyone at Google would disagree with your argument that content on other websites makes Google a better place to be. So, I don’t think this is an argument; other than perhaps a deep-seated need for recognition by Mountain View.

A reliance on lawyers instead of the application of existing technology and common-sense is what’s wrong with so many things today. I know you’re cleverer than that.

]]>