Should news sources use Google News?

In an article posted at Media Daily News, David Goetzel notes some arguments against google news made by Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban is the head of HDNet. Cuban remarks that content aggregators, such as Google News, shouldn't make a profit off of the journalistic investigations of other news sources. Cuban believes that, since Google News doesn't actually do any of the work in making the news stories, they shouldn't be able to make a profit off of them. In fact, he refers to Google News and other aggregators as vampires, sucking the profit from news sources. Cuban advises media sources to block Google News from linking to their stories, and cut them out of any profit-making. Some people are listening, and some news sites have blocked content aggregators and errected pay-walls.

However, Google has argued that Google News actually helps some news sources by driving traffic to their sites. Sites with low distribution could potentially benefit from awareness raised by Google News.

Towards the end of the article, Cuban and Greg Coleman clarified that they were not supporting pay-walls for news sites. They reaffirmed their desire for free content and advertisement-run sites.

The opinions and questions introduced through this article are having a serious effect on how news companies are doing business. With the decline in sales in print media, many companies are looking to online media outlets. With the internet being fairly new ground for these companies, many questions have to be raised in order to find the best way to make a profit online. As we can see in the article, there are two main options here: free content sites that make profit through advertising and sites where readers must pay for content.

According to Cuban, Google News and similar sites bring up another question: Should news sites allow Google News to make profit off of their work? While Google News does provide benefits to some news sources, it is easy to understand some people's outrage at content aggregators making money off of others' hard work. But, in the end, it is important to note that Google News doesn't actually take money from the news companies. It simply piggybacks on their success.

While some are angry abut this, I think that news sources should not block Google News. Google News helps many sites to find new readers and reach a larger distribution. In my mind, there is nothing wrong with Google News making money by this, as long as it is not stealing the content of other news sites works or directly making money from their work.

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Blogdor the Dragon.