Associated Press "mad as hell" with Google

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 7 Apr 2009 at 10:43

The newspaper rebellion against Google is gathering pace, with Associated Press promising to launch a campaign against the search giant.

Newspapers are growing increasingly angry at the way Google and other news aggregators lift content from their websites, but don't compensate them financially for doing so.

In the past week alone, Rupert Murdoch, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal and The Guardian Media Group have launched vitriolic attacks against Google.

They've now been joined by the chairman of the Associated Press, which provides news content for much of the world's media.

"AP and its member newspapers and broadcast associate members are the source of most of the news content being created in the world today," Dean Singleton told AP's Annual Meeting. "We must be paid fully and fairly.

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more."

The AP boss said he was confident newspaper groups would join its "battle to protect our content" and receive "appropriate compensation" for it. "You will be hearing more about this important and exciting campaign in the coming weeks and months," he warned.

Google and its ilk have become the focus of the newspapers' ire after a dramatic slump in advertising revenue, which has seen many US newspapers close or become online-only titles.

In a submission to the Government's Digital Britain report, The Guardian Media Group argued that the large volume of traffic directed to newspaper sites by the news aggregators was no longer sufficient compensation for allowing Google to take snippets of its content.