Relatedly, if they hate having Google do so, it's trivially easy to get off the page. Why don't they? Because for all their whining, they know that Google does drive traffic to them. "I don't have a business model, and you do," isn't a valid reason to ask for Google's money.
Google has drawn away direct traffic to these news sites into their own service. I don't believe its so much "hey, thanks for the traffic!" as "Well, a little bit is better than nothing..". Removing yourself from what has become your only option is not helpful when it just hurts you. Of course, we're both playing on opinions here since there is no evidence either way.
"Though Google is driving some traffic to newspapers, it's also taking a significant share away," Doctor said. "A full 44 percent of visitors to Google News scan headlines without accessing newspapers' individual sites."
Those two sentences have absolutely nothing to do with each other, despite Doctor's and the article's author's implication that they do. What really matters is, what portion of those 56% visitors would not have visited the news site in the absence of Google News. I'm guessing the answer is less. New result: Google is a net win for news sites.
The implication is that if the users were not skimming Google News' headlines, they would instead be skimming them on the content provider's site, and whether or not they actually found an article of interest, the provider would end up with the view and the ad dollar.
The article has shown nothing of the sort. It's entirely possible that in the absence of Google News that total news consumption would drop.
Not sure what your reasoning is on this statement. Is Google somehow forcing people to visit Google News? If not, why would people stop wanting the product if Google did not offer it? News is not a medium created by Google.
My take on Google News is this: Harmful to large organizations who have their own clout to draw viewers on brand recognition (Reuters, ABC, CBS, etc), but helpful to smaller news sites without that level of draw.
Which, if you look at who exactly is complaining, plays out as true.
