hutcheson - 6:47 pm on Apr 4, 2009 (gmt 0)

>what is the difference between what google news does, and some tv station just repeating endless clips from BBC news, SKY news, FOX, CNN, NBC etc... all without paying them a single cent.

Well, the difference is, basically, that Google news doesn't repeat endless clips from anyone.

What Google News does, is give free publicity to the newspapers, by sending zillions of customers directly to the newspaper site.

It's exactly the same as if a new TV channel were set up, which did nothing but broadcast nonstop advertisements for all the TV shows on OTHER channels. Any NON-MONOPOLISTIC TV station owner would love for someone to do that for him.

NON-MONOPOLISTIC. That's the kicker. Murdoch obtains profits by pushing competitive views off the newsstands by his newspaper monopoly. Google restores the level playing field by letting people see all those NON-Murdoch news sources, as well as the Murdoch ones.

That's why blocking Google from indexing Murdoch properties doesn't serve Murdoch's desires. What he WANTS is for Google to stop indexing NON-Murdoch properties, so he can return to the monopolistic power he enjoyed.

This attitude has driven most of the big-media attacks on Google: not only newspaper, but book publishers, Movie moguls, and Music Industries Goons feel extremely threatened -- not by Google stealing content (it doesn't), not by Google promoting their own content (it does WHICH IS GOOD FOR THEM) but by Google promoting content from other sources, thus allowing those other sources free access to promotion (thus allowing the "little guys" to evade the monopolistic lock in distribution channels owned by the pigopolists.

People in this forum, who regularly compete with large companies for keywords in Google search, should really appreciate Google for this.