The Battle begins:
Rupert Murdoch interviews at Sky News, Australia that his media house of the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal will de-index itself from Google Search. Reason: Because Google takes away their readers parasitically. The media swords are drawn against Google and the clank (sound of emptiness, is it?) spreads like fire across the internet through blogs, twitter, mails etc. I Repeat: … through blogs, twitter and mails et cetera!
Murdoch adds things like he does not agree with the idea that search engines fall under “fair use” rules, that he’d like to charge people for reading their news stories, and some more literally-crap-stuff like “we have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling”. It almost feels like a joke of distress they are in when trying to re-define things like “fair use” and the “way” people want to read news.
Watch this interview again:
To this, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt explains (read this) that its not them at all. And quite frankly, Google is indeed sending roughly a billion clicks to the news publishers every month. According to Eric, Google is “a great source of promotion”. And clank!! There goes the sword from Google in defense of things-as-they-are over the internet today. However bad it might be for the Media Moghuls. Google softly enamors the publishers by relating the developments caused by internet to something that happened earlier when the Radio or Television arrived. The situation is likened to how 24 hours news etc. challenged print then and yet everyone eventually co-existed.
And then Eric pictures the year of 2015 which would be significantly different from today; where hand held devices will adapt according to taste of individual readers and advertising (revenues) will also be handled differently… and blah, blah, blah in almost a bid to divert from the fact that internet has already challenged everyone else in business before. The geeks are doing it left, right and center.
That’s just about enough for a rather lame battle with a misdirected blame-missile from print media and a falsely assurance from the internet giant that happened between the two industries. Well Google, we all know that you are not responsible for uprooting the traditional media. But likening the modern day media crises to the advent of Television or Radio a few decades ago and then painting a scenario where print will co-exist as it did with the new service called Internet is nothing less than criminal.
Let the Geeks set it straight for you: Print media, you will have to die.
The blogs, twitters and every single atomic unit of news reporting is gonna gobble you up and all other “uneconomical processes around the world”. Completely.
Take the case of Print industry simply:
They have a huge capital & operational cost involved: In that they have to engage with heavy press & machinery, depend on fuel dependent logistics, depend on felling down of trees, depend on hired workforce to collect news and then finally reach the end-consumer at a price (the last thorn thrust by the side of a reader). All this for just a ten-minute read up? And how does this entire exercise help an advertising client in between? It gives just a thin probability that readers would remember a name when buying a pizza from the nearby square market?
Compare this for a blog with a team of a few good men. Really few. Follow TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb (and pluggd.in also) and thousands of more out there and just compare their readership or revenue stats with that of any typical media house. Compare all the components of the balance sheet. And you’ll stop thinking that in next ten years we will even have any Rupert Murdochs left blaming Googles for shattering their industry?
This is exactly what Wikipedia did to hard-back encyclopedia, YouTube did to music video/TV Channels, Napster did to CD sales & Music Industry etc. And this is what what Kindle would eventually do to print/books industry too. And why not? Why wouldn’t I want to stop cutting of trees or read fresh news for free?
A team of 20-25 efficient people (read Geeks), a modest capital investment and zero logistics will eventually wipe off all inefficient industries. And print is one of them. There is no choice for the traditional inefficiencies to survive in the face of internet. This is the true nature of internet: disruptive as Eric Schmidt aptly put it.
Adapt geeks quickly or go back to the SHADOWS.
That’s Dumb.Get over your G-Curry!
Is it OK for you if majority of your users use Adblock ?
^^ loser in the lose here…:)
Though I partially agree with the opinion stated here, I must have to say that i have certain reservations again positioning Geeks as killers of traditional media. There are three main points in support of that.
1. The readers of these blogs mentioned above are mostly geeks themselves who have a different mindset and are looking for what is happening in Technology circle than News overall
2. For hard core news buffs, these blogs maintained by few good people contains very less information. Rather there are opinions in these blogs which cannot be categorized as news. These are very popular medium but it gives you something ready to eat
3. These blogs do not have the resources to really collect the news around the world but to quote what is there and then form opinions. Yes there is news coming from Twitter at times but is it good enough.
Now in my opinion what Rupert Murdoch is doing makes a perfect business sense. He is trying to see that what his people are contributing to media is not taken for granted. If the move works, Google will lose its monopoly, A new business model will emerge where search engine pays for the quality contents and google does not stay a single player in search market.
If the move does not work, no issues. The clicks would lessen, the revenues will probably dry up for some time and then some one in Rupert Murdoch’s team will realise the mistake, point it out, enable the contents to be search-able again and voila, the people will start coming to the sites again.
Is there much to lose?
Rohit,
I agree mostly with you but when you say about collecting news from across the world.
If you skim carefully through any newspaper you will realize that 90% of news is just Press Releases that are made by organisations through PR wires and are first available on web and then are reproduced or rephrased by newspapers and bloggers.
5% are editorials which do not require a huge of reporter man power. They are equal to opinions produced on blogs.
The rest 3-4% are well, “2 people die in road accident in XYZ road”, do you really care for that kind of piece. They are just space fillers for newspapers and more accurately reported by locals on blog than by reporters.
And of course there are 1% headlines that help media create unnecessary controversy and sensation on request by the benefiting organisation. Even in that the bloggers will succeed as the so called social media marketing and PR companies will make sure the newsy bytes reaches us.
Journalism will exist, for sure. People want news and that means news reporters will get paid. Even now, news collection is generally handled by agencies like Reuters, PTI and the likes. Perhaps some bloggers will graduate into journalists.
But it is the media which is being overshadowed by new forms of communication. It is the print media which will become more and more expensive compared to the electronic forms. And why not? The marginal cost of copying an article is essentially zero if it is in digital form. So in a perfect market, the price would also reach zero. That means the whole supply curve shifts to the right and everyone benefits. Readers, journalists and Advertisers.
Except the incumbents who refuse to adapt.
Arvind,
You have put the points perfectly.
May be Murdoch doesn’t realize the power of Google. A newspaper’s life is only 1 day. Even the headlines on a News portal’s homepage don’t last for more than 2-3 days. It is Google that extends the life of a newspaper article. It Serves the article when it is needed instead of when it is written.
The Journalist and Editors will be more motivated to see people discussing a piece even 100 days after it has been published. Lower number of readers means obscurity for the writer. And please do not expect people to come directly to only a particular newspaper site for news. You never trust a single source of information.
What do you do after Google is gone? Maintain individual search index for each of the news sites? And then some GEEK comes in to give a meta search service for all newspaper sites. For some days you enjoy the traffic and then ban that too?
I am not sure if kindle in its current form will be accepted in the long run. The difference is the experience. May be it is only me but why does your eye strain while watching TV for 3 hours but not a movie in a theater. GEEKily speaking TV is a source of light but in theater it is projected on a screen and the light is reflected. Same thing with (News)paper and Kindle. We have been accepting the screens till now but wait till a Pranav Mistry type
personal projection devices become popular.
Also Kindle is the same model as that of physical newspaper. You have to browse your way to the right news. You cannot search the right piece.
But undoubtedly newspaper will have to die to make way for Greener, GEEKier world FTW.
Wow!! Google just withdrew the Murdoch video from the blog
On the contrary Indian print media is flourishing Arvind. How do you explain that??
If I can reply to that. I think in India there is still a huge majority in absolutes and relatives which do not have access to the new digital media. I think for that number who do not care much about digital media, newspaper / tv are pretty much the only avenues for communication.
To be fair – Arvind talked about paper media in general and not about India. I personally think the effects will be staggered over some more time to come.
Hmmm, limited penetration of internet is the rescuer of print media in India…that is what u mean, right? I’d contradict that too. Coz significant readership of newspapers n magazines is in cities of India where internet is quite rampant.
The psche works differently for an Indian.
I am deeply influenced by Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” .I champion Objectivism as the only proper philosophy left to emulate; therefore, in the spirit of “laissez-faire capitalism”, Murdoch and Google both are right in their own corporate realms, and Mr. Nigam in writing this article.
What bullcrap!
Hard back Encyclopedia exists and so does the CD sales and Music TV Industry. What crap is being talked about here?
This single article has brought down my respect for pluggd.in crashing down. It seems like some raped Dan Brown stuff.
And they all are floundering (Encyclopedia and ofcourse, CD sales in global market).
What arvind has mentioned here is the obvious lack of depth in what media offers – that doesnt justifies the cost/price that they ask for. Someday (it has already started) all of this wil be taken over by new media folks.
Dainik Bhaskar has shown it that the print media is not only alive but also rapidly growing. The level of broadband penetration needed to make world free of print media is not going happen in next 10 years.
Dood, dainik bhaskars n TOIs and everyone else will definitely like to believe this. It’s about what they believe from Inside, individually and not as a bunch.
And how do you predict that broadband penetration of “WORLD” is gonna take more than 10 years?? Inviability of print in north America is already evident … Is there any analytical data in support of your claim?
cheers,
Arvind
innovation is disastrous for established monopolies, so they work together with the government to prevent innovation at every turn. (see james madison and the opulent minority) that they will lose this battle is inevitable – innovation, creativity and generosity threaten to wash them down the drain constantly, they need a lot of help to stay in control.
murdoch’s plan doesn’t make sense unless there’s a second attack coming, maybe part 2 is destroy or limit google.