Google recently began to host trial advertisements on the US version of its popular news aggregator Google News.
Expressing fears that the move will "definitely affect newspapers' advertising revenues in the online word," the European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA), which represents over 5,200 newspapers, yesterday encouraged members to "consider all legal and other means to ensure that Google understands the harm it is causing to readers [and] journalists".
But Google repeated previous promises that it would not extend its advertising plans beyond American shores. "We have no plans to show adverts against Google News search results outside the US at this time," Google's senior manager for communications Bill Echikson told EurActiv.
Service 'drives advertising revenues'
Google has long insisted that its news service in fact benefits participating newspapers by increasing traffic to their websites. "By enabling people to discover information, Google drives web traffic, customer queries, advertising revenues and sales to our partners, both online and offline," the company argues on its blog.
"If people want to read the story, they must click through links in our results to the original website," Google explains. "If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News, we take the paper's stories out."
After conducting a search query, Google News users in Europe see only headlines, short abstracts and image thumbnails from the relevant articles. But American readers receive text adverts alongside the content in a similar style to those seen by European Gmail users.
Monetising the news
Some analysts believe traditional news media should be pleased with Google's decision to sell advertising. "Instead of getting all bent out of shape, the news media should be praying that Google succeeds and finds a way to monetise the news," wrote commentator Ken Chan on US journalist John Battelle's blog.
"Then, the rest of the news media can jump aboard the Google bandwagon, 'cause they haven't found a way to make money online by themselves," Chan added.
However, ENPA insists that individual publishers should also be allowed "to fix the price or compensation" for inclusion on news aggregators as a matter of principle.
"To ensure that newspaper titles remain sustainable and competitive, publishers rely on revenues from content sales, copyright licensing and advertising, not only from print versions, but increasingly from their online newspapers," it said in a statement.
Indeed, concerns over lost revenue even drove giant news agencies Agence France Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press (AP) to sue Google for "illegally" reproducing their material, while Belgian publishers' association Copiepresse went further by requesting Google not to include its news (see EurActiv LinksDossier on 'Copyright protection of online content').
Online advertising is a sensitive issue at EU level, with Google recently finding itself under fire from the European Commission over its use of targeted or behavioural ads (EurActiv 01/04/09).
