Wow. Not only is Maureen Dowd pretty stupid about politics (yes, i'm biased here:), she's very clueless about technology and media. Did you read her op-ed, "Dinosaur at the Gate"?
"... Firms, like Google here and Craigslist in San Francisco, have hijacked journalism, making us feel about as modern as the Tyrannosaurus rex model that sits on the Google campus.
Google is in a battle royal over whether it has the right to profit so profligately from newspaper content at a time when journalism is in such jeopardy..."
How clueless are these statements? I bet Dowd thinks she was clever in delivering this analogy, but it only highlights her misunderstanding of Google's role as an aggregator of news. Did she ever visit Google News? I do everyday. I rarely see a Google ad where Google profits from any newspaper content. Sure there are the AP articles with Google Ads, but what percentage of news links are these? I assume single digits. How much revenue is this for Google? Hardly a dent on the newspaper industry. Most of the news links are outbound to hundreds of media sites. Direct links, Maureen. Do you know what this means? Google makes money for the newspapers and sites that make it on Google News. It actually drives traffic to them. After this step, it's really up to the newspapers to monetize this traffic.
Yeah, Maureen, the sorry state of the newspaper industry is Google's fault as much as the Big Three auto manufacturers' demise was at the hands of the Segway.
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