"I hope I haven't offended you personally"
Not sure what makes you think I am...
This is my feeble attempt to apologize to those that I may have offended, as I've realized that I have been coming on way too strong lately, and have realized that I need to tone it down a few notches. Pretty weak, huh?
I'm just trying to convey to you that newspapers and journalism are doomed thanks to Craigslist, Google and Ebay but you seem to be in denial of the obvious.
We are in agreement that journalism, in the form it exists today, appears to be in trouble (If they don't do something about it.)
That you are placing the blame on specific companies bothers me. I would contend that if none of those specific companies existed, there would be others that would be doing the same thing with varying degrees of success, and the problem for journalists would not be much different.
I'm not enough of a Luddite to think it can be stopped. I just worry about a world in which we no longer have investigative journalists.
I think this is where the main disagreement lies. I may be too much of an optimist, but, I cannot imagine that there will ever be a time where investigative journalism will not exist. I think the logistics of the profession will change (mostly how news is delivered to the reader, and who the natural successor to the newspaper that employs the journalists are), but, I think there will always be a need for people who perform the task professionally. I can't see this going away as a significant portion of the population will not accept investigative stories from amateurs (at least not for long).
We already have too much unbridled corruption in this world. Without journalism at all chances are it will just get worse.
This is true, and always will be true, unfortunately. It's human nature. As long as people care about injustices like this, there will be a call for watchdogs (journalists) to get the word out.
There is something that bothers me about this however. Maybe it is just part of the aging process, but the trend I think I have seen as I grow older, is that journalism (due to corporate marketing trends, and tailoring of news more towards sensationalism, to appease the apparently shortened attention spans that people exhibit these days) has been slowly moving away from what it used to be, and becoming less valuable. (I'm not stating this as fact, just my impression.)
"I'm not sure Google makes money on their search business"
You don't seem to be grasping how the world works which must be why I'm not making any head way with my argument. Google search business IS their ad business. The two are one and the same. Their search business drives their ad business. They have some ad business not search related through Doubleclick but their river of money comes from ads next to their search results.
If you didn't know that explains why you aren't grasping any of the rest of this thread.
I think I might be grasping more than you give me credit for, but, I'm not after credit, only a good discussion of the issue, and maybe we can help to spark an idea to solve the problem, somehow.
This is how I see it (I hope you see value in it):
Google search is a service, not a product. It is how they attract viewers, which are their true product, that they sell advertising space to advertisers on the results pages.
That is analogous to a newspaper which runs news stories. This is also a service.
The news stories attract viewers, which are their true product, to sell advertising space to advertisers on their printed pages, or on their websites.
I don't think there is really any distinction between the two, so far, except the services that each provide to attract their product (viewers) are different, but achieve the same goal.
"Google may be a giant in the market, and some pretty stiff competition, but, they certainly do not have a monopoly in either the search, or the advertising business."
Google search market share is around 60-70%. Its nearest competitors Yahoo and Microsoft are in the teens. It is a defacto monopoly the same as Microsoft has with Windows.
A defacto monopoly sounds bad, but, it is not. It is simply a temporary situation that occurs when there is popular demand for a product, or service. To simplify it, it means that Google is providing a highly valuable product, or service, that is in demand. In this case, both their product, and their service, are highly desirable.
Google will continue to have a defacto monopoly until a competitor presents a product, or service, that matches, or improves upon, what they are offering. That is the opportunity for journalists, and frankly, anyone else, who wants to try to compete.
Granted, Google has a big head start because they had the foresight to position themselves as they have, while others let the opportunity pass them by for so long. This makes the barrier to entry pretty high if you want to compete head-to-head with Google, but there is no reason that one can't come up with a profitable idea that coexists with their services, making it a win-win for both.
"I don't see the newspapers clamoring to do much to help Google, either. You are in competing businesses."
Lets see, you want companies who are about to go bankrupt help a company making billions of dollars a year, interesting.
No, I am not suggesting that companies that are on the verge of bankruptcy should be putting their remaining resources in a box and sending them to Google. What I am suggesting is that if these companies want to salvage their business, they need to find ways to adapt, instead of blaming other companies for their own lack of foresight.
Google News DOESN'T help any of the newspapers it aggregates. It drives a little traffic to them but it more than compensate by turning them in to an indistinguishable commodity and it eliminates any loyalty to any particular site among news readers which is deadly to web sites.
We have a difference of opinion as to whether Google's news aggregation service driving viewers (their product) to your service, where they become your product to sell, is helpful, or hurtful.
I see your side of the argument in that you are only getting a one-time shot at that viewers that are referred to you (per story) from Google News.
On the other hand, you are likely to get exposure from a lot of viewers that would never have known your website existed.
This is a trade-off, is it an equitable trade-off? I don't know, it is impossible for me (or anyone) to measure accurately.
In addition, I understand that your news stories are shown side-by-side with competing news sources, and you feel this hurts you.
I agree that it may, and it will likely cause fierce competition between you, and your competitors.
There will be clear winners, and clear losers in this battle, and the most visible result that you will see is a consolidation of news corporations.
It's happening, and I think we agree that we both see it.
As for the viewer loyalty issue mentioned, your goal is to attract viewers and expose them to your advertising as much as possible, as often as possible, to help you sell advertising. Nobody can help you with this, other than yourself, as a business wanting to compete on the Internet.
I admit that website viewer retention is not easy, especially with the sheer number of competing news websites on the Internet, but, that is what is necessary to have a successful website.
In order to gain viewer loyalty for a website, you have to first find a way to get viewers to your website.
Google News is doing this for you for free. That's NOT EVIL in my book.
Then, you have to find reasons for those users to prefer your website, and want to come back.
Google cannot do this for you, you have to do it. I don't see this as EVIL either, since they have no control over people's preferences.
I see this as Google sharing their product (their viewers) with you, which gives you an opportunity to make them your product, and sell them to your advertisers, too.
That seems downright NEIGHBORLY to me.
Google News is cool, I use it all the time, it was an awesome idea in the theoretical sense, but its a simple fact its helping destroy all the newspapers that provide its content along with Craigslist taking all the classified ads. Its kind of a chronic problem that they do things that are cool at an engineering level, but they have a total disregard for the unintended consequences.
Emphasis is mine.
I think is the natural progression of a connected world. And, I really think the blame is misplaced.
It could be argued that the blame lies in the lack of the news agencies willingness to visualize the possibilities of the connected world, and see the consequences of not taking appropriate action to adapt to it, in order to ensure that they remained viable entities.
Had Google's founders had different interests, and as a result, not started Google, I think it goes without saying that another company would likely be in a very similar position, and people would be pointing fingers at them instead of Google. The problem would still exist, I think.
As to the fate of journalism, I don't think that the number of newsworthy stories will ever drop, and I think there will always be a demand for people who are skilled in investigating, and reporting, so I think that the human labor required to handle the stories won't change much.
I do believe that the number of companies, and types of companies, employing the human labor will change.
The only exceptions would be in jobs that are redundant, but that is the nature of more efficient business models, and really doesn't have much to do with anything in the argument.
As long as they have their river of money and are paying their engineers a million bucks for ideas, they will do just about anything, even something EVIL like destroy journalism which is what they are doing along with Craigslist.
This is strictly an emotional argument which doesn't really require a response, however, I wish to point out that angst you are feeling about Craigslist is simple frustration that their business model works better than yours.
In other words, Craigslist has found a way to provide the same service you do, but they have found a more effective way to do it, which means people will gravitate to it. I guess you could call Craigslist a defacto monopoly, too, although, the barrier to entry to compete with them is a lot lower than Google's.
That's just whining. (This is where the apology in advance comes in. I don't want this to be viewed as a personal attack on your character.)