In August, Google partnered with the Agence-France Presse, the Press Association and the Associated Press, allowing them to directly include their content onto the Google News page. Although this isn’t a death-blow for newspapers by any means, but it is of great concern. For many, this will curtail a significant amount of referral traffic sent to sites across the country. Furthermore, this pits those newspapers against the very same agencies they depend upon for extending their reach in both print and online.
Google’s response was expected:
This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers’ most highly valued content: original content. Previously, some of this content could be harder to find on Google News, and as a result of this change, you’ll have easier access to more of this content, and publishers will likely receive more traffic to their original content. [Google News Blog]
The sentiment is valid, but wire services are a fundamental need for most news organizations today. They extend the reach of a small metro or local bureau to the far corners of the world. And although one may not set out looking for international news from the East Bumpkin Picayune, there still exists the potential to capture a reader off that traffic.
Presently there is a symbiotic relationship. Having rolled out a news comments in beta recently, Google obviously isn’t sitting on their laurels. Unless the smaller news outlet pull a Copiepresse and push Google to ink deals comparable to those signed with the agencies things could get very ugly, very quickly.
