incrediBILL - 3:40 am on Aug 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

I'm thinking Google should just dump those newspapers and see what happens when they have a lot less traffic. I think the newspapers will come crawling back and beg to be included without making Google pay.

Google could simply quit indexing or including any company in Google News that doesn't explicitly permit Google via the robots.txt and theoretically add an EULA that says explicitly authorizing Google in robots.txt gives them permission to display headlines and snippets.

Then there is another alternative, Google could start charging newspapers for inclusion and make it a true stand-off where the newspapers have to pay Google to index them in the first place.

It could get ugly :)

Google does this not by producing their own content, but by using content created by others.

Without the portal most people wouldn't see the content in the first place unless it was their primary newspaper to start with. There is simply too much content to deal with and without tools such as Google News, most people would never see it so these guys are playing with fire IMO.