Belgian Newspapers Opt Out of Google News

IanFogg | September 19, 2006, 12:31 PM

Special Guest blog from Benjamin Lehmann:

A Belgian court has ruled against Google after a complaint was lodged regarding infringement of copyright by the Google News service. Although the ruling was issued on September 5, details only emerged yesterday. Copiepresse, who brought the case, handles copyright for the Belgian Press (French-speaking and German-speaking). The court ruled that links and summaries of articles in the Belgian Newspapers it represents, for example La Derniere Heure, La Libre Belgique and Le Soir, should be removed from Google News.

This move is not entirely unprecedented: Agence France-Presse (AFP) brought a similar case against Google last year. However, it is difficult to see what these organizations stand to gain in the long term from suing Google. By cutting themselves out of Google News, the Belgian press is only curtailing traffic to its online properties. Instead they should be competing to attract audience onto their sites via news feed aggregators, and adopting strategies to keep that audience onsite once they have arrived.

Online properties are increasingly important for newspapers seeking to target compelling younger audiences. A very small percentage of online consumers in Europe aged 15-24 are classed as heavy news readers (6 hrs plus pw), whilst over half are classed as heavy internet users. Newspapers face competition for new audiences from a growing number of news providers online, for example, portals, broadcaster online presences, news content owners, consumer generated content sites and RSS feed aggregators.

Online properties in Europe are optimizing their sites in order to attract traffic from search engines and aggregators. The large majority of newspapers in Europe are offering syndication of their content via RSS. The concern of Belgian newspapers is that deep-linking to their stories disrupts their site navigation: it allows users to circumvent the homepage, and hence avoid advertising and other sections which they would otherwise encounter en route to the story. However, it's important to emphasize that Google news presents as much an opportunity as a threat to newspapers seeking to generate audience online. Newspapers should deploy strategies to maintain branding, engagement and advertising throughout individual stories, and seek to migrate audience from search engines and syndication feeds onsite.

Tactics for pursuing this strategy include:

a. Maintaining homepage-style navigation panels throughout site;
b. Embedding textual hyperlinks to related stories;
c. Selling banner and contextual advertising throughout the site;
d. Deploying audio and video to add value to stories.

JupiterResearch clients interested in learning more about the role of newspapers online should refer to Barry Parr’s report, The Future Of News. Alternatively, my forthcoming report, Defining The Role of Newspapers Online, will offer a European perspective on the matter.

Benjamin Lehmann,
European Content and Programming.