Comments on: Debunking The Italian Newspapers’ Antitrust Allegations Against Google

By: Stupidscript

Stupidscript — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:25:19 +0000

Something I have been hearing more and more, these days:

“You’ll never get it if you don’t ask.”

This has been used to justify the most inane, hopeless goals, such as “Get our supplier to give us 50% off!” and “Let 6 of us in for the price of 4!” It just makes the person who asks seem like an idiot (especially awful when it is a subordinate asking at their “superior’s” insistence against their better judgement) and the person who has to respond seem like an a****le. A no-win situation that is poisoning relationships all over the place.

Look what it’s doing for the FIEG! They’ve never looked more silly, even as they dip their chins and mumble, “Yeah, but we won’t get it if we don’t ask…”

By: wordsmithbob

wordsmithbob — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:54:19 +0000

The silliest part of this argument is that, as every SEO knows, google gives a great deal of preference to newspapers because of all the high quality content. Which is as it should be. Quality content should win out of crass sales pitches.

I also don’t think the Italian newspapers are alone. so many newspapers are hurting because of the Internet that I imagine a lot of other news organizations my “gang up on” or at least try to blame Google for their problems.

Don’t shoot the messenger. Google is just trying to deliver the most relevant news to those searching for it.

By: nickstamoulis

nickstamoulis — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:38:25 +0000

Personally, I think that newspapers provide online content (much like many blogs, content providers, etc) and should not be treated any differently than any other website. I agree that the search engines do provide enough information so the newspaper sites can build their sites properly to maximize their visitors through the engines…