Posted on April 8, 2009 by by Valeri

So the popular webblog site Techcrunch tells us how newspapers want to fightback “shut down” websites and companies such as Google because apparently they are “stealing” its content and destroying its business. Thanks Johathon for posting the link.

This is also another interesting report where Robert Thomson , editor of The Wall Street Journal had a go at Google and other websites that aggregate mainstream media. “Sites such as Google are parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet.” Thomson said. “You can include Twitter and Typeboard as well”.

Rupert Murdoch also had a go at Google, accusing the search giant of poaching content it doesn’t own and urging media outlets to fight back. “Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” asked the News Corp Boss.

What is interesting about this issue is that Google sends more than 300 million clicks a month to newspaper Web sites, so what is the problem here? after all as mentioned in TechCrunch and other sites, any newspaper could stop its content from showing up on Google with a bit of code in their  robots.txt file but they won’t do it because Google is bringing them visitors.

So if The Wall Street Journal/Rupert Murdoch/News Corp and other newspapers in the States are complaining about Google News and other news aggregator sites, how long will it be before News.com.au and other Australian newspapers follow their whining with Australian based web companies? after all News Corp owns news.com.au and many other newspapers in Australia.

And one more question,  how long will it take for the newspaper industry to attack web community journalism blogs and websites where the community makes the news?

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