Should newspapers sue Google and Yahoo as a class action?

Well, ain't that the multi-billion dollar question?
I can tell you this with some certainty. The current setup is working just fine for Google. Not working so fine for us.

 

Making a lot of money is not against the law. Right. But what if you're making all that money in large part because you're selling ads based on somebody else's property?

The argument is they're taking but not giving back.

Again, it's like some outsider raiding a newspaper building, taking all the papers, putting them in his own trucks and selling them but not paying the newspaper for it.

 

They are giving back. They're telling the reader how to get to you.
Your last point, which I don't think is a good analogy at all, alleges theft. So you're saying Google and Yahoo are stealing from newspapers?

Is that your cause of action?

 

This idea is absurd. Forget about it.

 

And since we're talking about pie-in-the-sky ideas: Instead of a lawsuit wouldn't a better plan consist of getting all the newspapers and wires to invest in their own browser that just links to news stories? Never happen, right? That's why papers are struggling.

 

Actually, every effort in that direction has inevitably failed.

 

Really? I was naive enough to think I was original. Tell me more about that. I had no idea.

 

A link? Something, anything please? Would love to read about it.

 

Newspapers still make some of the highest profit margins of any industry in the country. How about we sue the newspaper publishers bleeding their companies dry instead of suing google.

 

Yahoo News and Sports license all content they use, both from AP for a large fee and other "partner" newspapers for a lesser one. The RSS feeds available in My Yahoo (which link back to the original source's web site) came to be through individual agreements with those papers. With worldwide distribution via the internet's most highly trafficked news source, newspapers do nothing but gain from those agreements.

Google News is another story. To the best of my knowledge, they pay nothing to license that content. Great deal for them. Not so much for the newspapers. Then again, maybe the distribution is worth it to the publishers.

 

Big difference here. Just because you pay a large AP fee, doesn't entitle you, er Yahoo, rights to every newspaper account. If you, I mean Yahoo, wants to make individual agreements with chains, that's fine.
But, you can't tell me you have agreements with every paper that you link to in your RUMORS section of your homepage. Unless, you've struck some sort of agreement no one has heard of with the Washington Post and their Redskin reports.
I'll agree with you, that Yahoo has made steps to right the ship and Yahoo isn't Google. But, that doesn't mean Yahoo, as a news organization, isn't still stomping its feet.

 

Yes, the distribution IS worth it. I just did a story for my day job looking at self-googling (sounds dirty, doesn't it?), but there is a whole industry devoted to search engine marketing, and online image enhancement (the former I knew about it, the latter not so much). Their point is, the worst thing that happens is if somebody googles you, and NOTHING comes up.

Now they were talking more about individuals and small businesses, but it would seem the same applies to newspapers. If you decide to take your ball and go home and make sure Google and the like gets nothing, you're committing hara-kiri to your chances to be seen. The reality a lot of newspapers have been slow to adapt to is that the Internet allows readers to customize their own content and go where they want, rather than be forced to go somewhere they don't want to go.