Google News is NOT newspaper driven: Zell vs. Schmidt

Poor Google?

The outpouring of support for the $150 billion market cap company (that is oft cited as the most influential corporation in a generation) whenever anyone dares to discuss the fairness, or not, of the business model that fuels its over-sized market returns is as surreal as the very public facing mission that supposedly drives the Google stampede: organize ALL the world’s information.

Poor Sam Zell?

After pledging to invest several hundred million dollars of his own fortune to the continued flourishing of the news business in America, he had the audacity to call the Google “boys” on their very public stance of no need to pay content owners for Google making money off of their expensive to produce property, such as the news reporting that populates Google News.

The blogosphere has been quick to come to Google’s defense by suggesting that billionaire Zell must be a dunce picking a fight. After all, conventional Google is God/King wisdom is that Google doesn’t even make money from Google News.

Many feel it is so “bizarre that this is so difficult for those in the publishing industry to understand,” because Google is the one that makes content owners content so much more valuable, as it is claimed.

But alas, it is not the Googley case. Not at Google News, not at Google.com, not at Google’s YouTube.

(see Does Google SEO success ’suck’? and Google’s YouTube, Viacom: Better off divorced!)

Google does not serve AdWords at Google News is the much too obvious, facile retort to the Tribune, AFP and AP demands for appropriate compensation for exploitation of copyright content by Google.

Google evidently does not show ads at Google News now, and it may very well never do so. Why? Because the Google “organize ALL the world’s information” business model does not necessitate it to do so!

Google News headlines are returned in Google SERPS, however, before the “organic” results and high-priced Google AdWords ARE shown on such Google pages where newspaper copyright content is featured.

Google News is obviously a vital component of the Google long-term end game to be the ONLY source, destination and repository to find and search for anything and everything in the world.

As Google CEO Eric Schmidt is fond of underscoring, the Google trick is to drive more searches, more uses of Google, which inevitably drives more revenues for Google, and financial returns for the Google shareholders.

Sam Zell has the blogosphere misfortune to be concerned about his shareholders' returns, not the Googley ones!