There’s lots of news around Newscorp and getting Google to pay for the content on Newscorp newspapers. I don’t like is companies using Google as a scapegoat.
Newscorp feels that Google should be paying for access. MSFT is talking about paying Newscorp for their content. The rationale being that perhaps this will make Google follow suit. Meh. Sorry Newscorp, Google’s not responsible for your declining newspaper revenues, no more so than it’s responsible for the success of Huffington Post.
What is responsible is slow versus fast. Murdoch himself said:
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow”
Google isn’t killing the news paper business, innovation is leaving it behind. Craigslist is doing more for classifieds with less. Ebay is doing more for selling stuff with less. Blogs, like the Huffington post, are doing more for real time news with less. These new businesses are eating the News business’s lunch and the newspaper companies are too slow to respond.
Rupert, dude, go ahead and block Google. Google’s not stealing revenue; you’re not capturing the potential of the internet. What you need to do, is get beyond the Google question, make your papers leaner, more cost effective and start leveraging the internet. Focus on innovation and new profitable revenue models. Ask the telegraph and the Guardian for tips. Do more with less faster. Until you do that you’ll continue to see your bottom line shrink.
