Newspaper Group Suing Google for Attracting Readers

By Ben Haber

May 28th, 2008

By Ben

In the world of Google News, newspapers and blogs are doing everything they can to increase their search engine rankings. Some newspapers are writing ‘search engine friendly’ headlines, while others are turning to SEM and SEO to increase their ranking.

The common goal? Appear towards the top of the page, get clicks, attract readers, and increase advertising.

Well, apparently not everyone shares this methodology. The Associated Press reports:

Belgian French-language newspapers said Tuesday they want search engine Google to pay up to euro49 million ($77 million) in damages for publishing and storing their content without permission.

The newspaper copyright group Copiepresse said it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court in September that will decide on their claim that they suffered damages of between euro32.8 million ($51.7 million) and euro49.2 million ($77.5 million)

Last year Google lost a lawsuit filed by the newspapers that forced it to remove headlines and links to news stories posted on its Google News service and stored in its search engine’s cache without the copyright owners’ permission.

Techdirt thinks “Google should counter that these newspapers owe them every damn cent of ad revenue that was generated by anyone clicking through from Google to those newspaper sites — plus an additional fee for being so kind as to “advertise” those newspapers websites to those who had never heard of them before.”

What’s your take?

Entry Filed under: Mainstream Media,Social Media