londrum - 6:48 pm on Nov 14, 2009 (gmt 0)

why should he opt out? he wants the traffic. he just wants google to stick with headlines and snippets that don't keep the users from visiting the site.

you don't take the football away when someone fouls you, do you? which is what you are saying they should do. what you do is blow the whistle and try and get them to play by the rules.

and before someone says "he can't have his cake and eat it", google NEEDS the papers to keep their stuff in the index. they need them to stay in the game. otherwise google would be totally devoid of content. if anyone is doing anyone any favours, its the papers. not only do they give up their daily content for free (because google needs to take every story, every day, even if they don't actually appear -- so their algo can gauge the popularity of each story), but they also provide them with the means to make money. they are the building blocks of google's business. and all that they get in return is some traffic, which might result in nothing at all. ...and even then, that only applies to the four-or-so links that appear underneath the story. the other few thousand papers behind the little link don't even get that.

google is trying to pass off this "traffic" as if its some glittering golden prize that only they can dish out, like some giant in the sky chucking coins down below.

"don't anger the giant, folks, or the coins will disappear."
that is what they are threatening us with.

people are starting to wake up, i reckon, and realise that this amazing google traffic isn't inherent on google at all. it's not something that they create. the world's web traffic wouldn't suddenly dry up if google shut down for a day. people would carry on doing exactly the same number of searches, but through other engines instead.

but the content, on the other hand, IS reliant on the papers. because they actually create it. if the papers shut down for a day then the content wouldn't exist.

google are a bit like the money men on the stock markets -- gordon gecko. they don't create anything at all. they just play around with other people's hard graft and stuff up their wallets on it.