Message to Tom from the Interweb: "Do not piss off the Goog, your Internet life depends on it".
Seriously, as much as I don't see eye-to-eye with many of Google's decisions and tactics, they own the gateway to the web (currently) and will destroy you if they feel like it.
I agree. Now we just need pg to write his next article entitled "Google is dead".
Google is in that comfy monopolistic position where they can sit around on their advertising cash cow, tell others how they want the web to work, and no longer really have to innovate.
They'd have a hard time suing organic aggregators like Digg since most news sites are running their buttons.
I COULD see an RIAA-style campaign where they just start suing bloggers left and right for copy-pasting too many characters in their posts.
Also, I could see Techmeme getting sued.
Basically, anyone who's going out and TAKING content from the news orgs and repurposing it for their own ends could be a target if they go that route. Forums and social news sites should be pretty safe.
Is there a list of AP sites? So we can make sure we don't use any of their material on our own sites?
Not by means of protest or anything. It's just that fears of bankruptcy are clearly driving the AP nuts and I'd rather not be in the way of any random lawsuits thrown around as a last ditch effort.
The AP is pissed because Reddit, Digg, Google, and others (Hacker News?) are using AP content every day... usually with full attribution and links back to the article. Let me put that another way - some of the most popular sites on the internet send millions of pageviews to the AP every day.
That's a traffic situation that most sites would love to be in - but the AP can't figure out how to make money from those eyeballs? So they're going to try to stop the influx of traffic, so that... what? Their content can wither and die in peace? Talk about cutting yourself out of the equation.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 39.1 ms ] threadSeriously, as much as I don't see eye-to-eye with many of Google's decisions and tactics, they own the gateway to the web (currently) and will destroy you if they feel like it.
Which is pretty scary, really.
Google vs. news sites in 2009 = Microsoft vs. ISVs in 1989
Google is in that comfy monopolistic position where they can sit around on their advertising cash cow, tell others how they want the web to work, and no longer really have to innovate.
I COULD see an RIAA-style campaign where they just start suing bloggers left and right for copy-pasting too many characters in their posts.
Also, I could see Techmeme getting sued.
Basically, anyone who's going out and TAKING content from the news orgs and repurposing it for their own ends could be a target if they go that route. Forums and social news sites should be pretty safe.
Not by means of protest or anything. It's just that fears of bankruptcy are clearly driving the AP nuts and I'd rather not be in the way of any random lawsuits thrown around as a last ditch effort.
That's a traffic situation that most sites would love to be in - but the AP can't figure out how to make money from those eyeballs? So they're going to try to stop the influx of traffic, so that... what? Their content can wither and die in peace? Talk about cutting yourself out of the equation.