Competitors Can’t Live With, or Without, Google
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | November 27, 2006 | Share This
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Belgium News Blues
Over the weekend, Google reached a settlement deal with two Belgian copyright groups, Sofam and Scam, that will allow Google News to continue aggregating their news content. Earlier this year, Google lost a similar case against Copiepresse (a Belgian newspaper group) and settled another case with the Associated Press - both over content copyright issues. Search Engine Watch has extended coverage of the continuing legal saga.
This debate is principally centered around whether or not Google is legally obligated to omit copyrighted content, and more importantly, if they should pay publishers for content aggregation. Publishers, of course, are seeking compensation, while Google maintains that publishers can opt-out of the Google index by including a robots.txt file in their site code. Google is evidently trying to clarify their opt-out indexing process with their recent addition of Google News to Sitemaps. A Webmaster World forum thread discusses the update.
Blogs in the Spotlight
Speaking of Google indexing, Andy Boyd reports that blog results are now showing up at the bottom of regular Google search results. Earlier this fall, Google added the Blog Search button to Google News, so the inclusion of blogs on normal search pages further indicates their growing significance in Google’s index. So far, this screen shot is the only evidence of the new blog inclusions, so it remains unclear how the separation of blogs from regular site listings will affect blog rankings in the normal SERPs.
Google Accused of Being Orwellian (again)
Brewster Kahle, the founder of Archive.org, criticized Google in an interview for attempting to “control the library of human knowledge”. He calls Google’s Book Search a “nightmare”, “useless” and a prelude to Orwell’s 1984. Kahle states that Archive.org is currently seeking to build an alternative that balances corporate interests and public interests to create a more open digitization of the world’s libraries. Google Blogoscoped has a video and transcript of Mr. Kahle’s protest.
Google v. The World
It seems like Google’s list of competitors grows daily as Google continues to index more and more of the world’s information. A heated debate on Read/Write Web mulls over the possibility of a future Google Web-based Operating System that would compete with Microsoft’s Vista OS. Robert Scoble continues the conversation with a more, ahem, dubious view of a GoogleOS.
In the meantime, Google is using legal threats to eliminate its small-time competitors. Google’s latest target is Gaia, an open-source 3-D “attempt to reverse engineer Google Earth”. Citing improper usage of licensed Google Earth data, a Nov. 25 letter requested that Gaia remove all “reverse engineering” content and cease developing their project with Google Earth software. A full copy of Chief Technologist Michael Jones’ letter is posted on Gaia.
Despite Google’s insistence that YouTube and Google Video don’t compete with video products from other media companies, the BBC reports that “the online video boom is starting to eat into TV viewing time. Though the survey only covers the UK media market, it indicates that Google’s video assets are increasingly blurring the line between media and search.
He Said, She Said
Finally, Threadwatch discusses a rumor that Google Base is to become a PPC product - a development that could drive GOOG above $600. The post’s author reports that he picked up the rumor from one of his classifieds vendors, who “signed an agreement with Google Base” in which “they mentioned that they plan to turn Google Base into a PPC product”. Matt Cutts, however, replied, “I don’t expect the real estate (or any other part of Base) to go PPC.”
Related Links:
- World Association of Publishers Doesn’t Speak Search
- Google + Quickbooks: Good News For Small Businesses?
- Can’t Move Those Google Base Items? Advertise… on Adwords
Topics: Google |