For years I’ve dreamed of the day when a major and well-known corporation with a funny name got into some controversy. That way, talking about it would be that much more enjoyable, the face of capitalism would be more playful, and I’d have a lot more fun writing headlines.
That day has finally come.
A French news agency is suing Google (note who did the ads for the article…that’s too funny) on grounds that it’s news service reproduces wire news stories without authorization. If you’ve never been to Google News, the page is basically a list of headlines gathered from papers all over the world and organized based on topics. All the information is taken from other websites (including the headline and summary).
The French’s case doesn’t work because the only way to get the full story is to click through to the page(s) Google got the words from. (The headline for the story snipet is always links to the original story of that headline and that snipet.) This is free advertising, so stop bitching.
Google officials also point out that the only way an article be included in Google News is if the company chooses to be indexed for Google News. Hmmm…
The best part about this story is that I found it via my Home Page: Google News.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment