Andy_Langton - 12:02 am on Sep 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

Andy..if you read my link above, to what I found in August..it does not all come from wikipedia..much of the image material that Google use for this "carousel" comes from other sites..not wikipedia..and they do not verify if these "other sites" actually have the rights to show those images, that Google then uses..as was the case with the "Louvre" image..

I get it, Leosghost, I really do. And it's important that we know the detail of how Google operates. My point is that there's a discussion to be had about individual Google features that doesn't need to resolve to "Google is a scraper".

Let's assume that Google is an evil, twisting content thief that is exploiting all of our content for profit. If that was common knowledge, and everyone agreed, could we have a different discussion, or would every discussion need to come back to that point?

Check netmeg's comment above, you'll see a degree of frustration that might prevent her from commenting. That means we're going to miss information and opinions.

If anything, the "Google is stealing" comments totally miss the point. The carousel is a clear step from Google, who want to be the final destination rather than the gateway. They want to answer all basic questions right on the first page a user sees. And probably, they'll do that, and they'll do that in a way that users love and hardly anyone will click the first link on those pages any more. So is that game over for webmasters? Do we turn the lights off?

Or is there, perhaps, a discussion to be had beyond the mechanics of the thing? Perhaps we can look at what a site-owner who targets 'carousel keywords' might do to adapt. I have some ideas I could post. But I don't want to argue mechanics.