Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has made enemy after enemy in recent years after continuing to aggregate news and information sources to ensure customers can find the information they want, any time and on any device.

When Google News was launched, it became a target for publishers who believed that Google was somehow pilfering content. These folks still do not get it, especially media baron Rupert Murdoch. It's odd, since Murdoch seemingly gets new media.

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), by most accounts, brings enormous value to each customer it touches. From rapid-fire internet search results to free email to online document creation and storage, the company helps hundreds of millions find and organize their digital lives every day. So, with that being said, why don't some folks seem to understand Google's value more than be afraid of it?

SCROLL TO BOTTOM TO SEE LATEST POST

Live Bloggin' Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) earnings report

Begins @ 4:00pm EST
Host: Andrew Horowitz, money manager and author
The Disciplined Investor


16:01 GOOG prelim $4.84 vs $4.52 First Call consensus; revs $3.7 bln, ex TAC revs vs $3.61 bln First Call consensus.

Google reported revenues of $5.19 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, an increase of 42% compared to the first quarter of 2007 and an increase of 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007. Google reports its revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs, or TAC. In the first quarter of 2008, TAC totaled $1.49 billion, or 29% of advertising revenues.

16:10 Stock is in major rally mode, the earnings beat on revenue was a major sigh of relief as there was significant concern about the Doubleclick integration (GOOG up $40 on evening, so far). Currently trading @ $503.

16:15 Stock at $497, leveling off ahead of call. Numbers in and tabled. Overall, there is a cheer and a good amount of relief.

16:20 Chart is looking good...

Please join me later today when I will be live blogging Google's earnings:
Where: Google Earnings: Live Blog
When: 4:00pm EST


If IBM (NYSE: IBM) gives us any clue as to the technology sector's ability to maintain insulation from the financial chaos we have been dealing with, we may see a glorious rebound for Google shareholders. But remember: IBM actually sells tangible products and services that can be bought with non-dollar currencies. In yesterday's earnings release, IBM Global services was reported as the top revenue generator for the period. So, it is possible that the strength of foreign currencies helped to provide a good portion of IBM's profits.

Perhaps Google will be able to capitalize on some of the currency exchange benefit; but probably not with any real significance. This is just one of the line items that we are going to find out after the close.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) just loves trying to get users of its services a more interactive experience. This past summer, Google announced a unique new offering where readers may be able to add their own two cents to a new story indexed by Google News if they find themselves quoted in the news.

The New York Times' Noam Cohen reminds us of Liebling's words: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Well, with this service, Google has been allowing comments to be 'paired' with news articles indexed by its News website. Google News currently tracks over 4,500 news sources globally and is now resurfacing in the news as it gains more traction -- and more watchers to what this could do to online news interaction.

The concept Google has here is brilliant and was overdue before its launch in mid-2007. The large number of quotes and sayings printed daily that are taken out of context for some publisher's agenda molds the minds of many millions of people who -- believe it or not -- believe everything they read. Pity. However, Google's attempt to level the playing field is an admirable one, and 2008 should see the uptake of this new "feature" turn online journalism more into a "blog-like" interaction between publisher and reader. Gone are the days of one-way journalism. Ask some newspapers about this.

The next step: Google needs to promote Google News as a one-stop source of news information regardless of location and language of the reader. Of course, Google is stressing that it is not in the business of journalism. Instead, it wants journalists and those used in news sources to embrace the feature even further to give differing perspectives on a news story, "across the political spectrum, geographically." Sounds familiar with Google's mantra of making information universally accessible. Currently, the English version of Google News is the only one that works with the new commenting service.

"All the News That's Fit to Print" has run at the top of the front page of the New York Times for decades. But, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is taking that a step further. It will begin to run a breath-taking amount of news from the Press Association of Britain, Canadian Press, Agence France-Presse and the AP. Google has licensed the feeds and will run the entire stories from the sources. It solves a dispute it has had with some news agencies which claimed that Google was using their headlines to draw users without compensating them as the content holders.

It also changes the Google News model. Google will no longer just run headlines. The stories from these four sources will no longer show up when they run in other media. AP stories are currently picked up by Google, even when they run at AP's newspaper partners. This has sent traffic to a number of newspaper websites, and that will traffic flow is very likely to be undermined.

Google's ability to run entire stories will also allow it to sell advertising on these news pages. Google News is currently "ad free."

I've said it before, and I will say it again: I can't fathom why some detractors of Google News think that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is "stealing" their content in any way. This article over at Techdirt explains this in perfect logic. The "old" guard continues to lash out at Google for stealing content when all Google News does is act like an RSS aggregator. That is, it is a great collection point to get readers to the various websites of newspapers and online journalism. It is not stealing anything and Google makes no money from the ad-free Google News. I guess even in the land of old media, some folks don't do their homework.

The thing is this -- Google continues to play nice with some publishers (like France's AFP) and will probably want to appease others as time marches on. I'm pretty sure that Google News is a great conduit to get new readers to websites all over the world (many of which have advertising), so it befuddles me that some online newspapers and others want to get "out of" Google News. By doing that, they risk loss of readership most likely. Yes, that is exactly what most online newspapers need, right?

The democratization of all this global news content is the future most likely, and Google gets it (like many others). It's no longer a walled garden of fees and subscriptions, which is possibly why some publishers don't want Google News camped out in the backyard, as it were. The newspaper industry is becoming extinct but it'll hold on to shreds of the past for as long as possible before accepting rapid change. Until then, I'm still going to use Google News to find your content.

With Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) consistently trying to horn in on Microsoft's playground for office/productivity software, Ole' Softie is accusing Google of profiting handsomely from copyright infringement and pirated software. In a nutshell, an attorney for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)says that Google's AdWords program allows software pirates to locate and download illegal software. Actually, that is true. Google's uncanny ability to index just about everything on the web makes it easy to locate, well, just about anything.

Should Google be held liable for providing a "table of contents" to the entire web, legal and illegal? That is the question -- and it reminds me of how file-trading services can or can't be held responsible for what its users upload and download using its search services.

Microsoft attorney Thomas Rubin said that Google's scanning the books of others and taking news headlines and categorizing them in Google News constitutes its "cavalier" approach to copyright infringement. On the scanning of books, that is a great question for debate. On the indexing of news using the automated Google News service, that one is still up for debate, I think. If news services don't want new customers to find them or want to live in the "old media" age, Google should block their sources from being automatically aggregated. I use Google News constantly based on easiness and so I don't have to waste my time finding literally hundreds of different new sources for information. Does Google wield enough power to change all the rules here?

We all know that the Europeans don't like big American Internet and computer companies -- just ask Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). In addition to France having quite a pickle with the Google Books project, the Belgians have gotten in on the action recently as well.

A Belgian court has just recently ordered Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) to stop publishing the content of Belgian newspapers without permission and/or fees from the various Belgian sources. Again, the media and courts just don't get it -- Google doesn't publish a thing. Google News, for example, simply aggregates existing content into one centralized area. Courts are not too bright if they can't see the simple difference here.

Regardless, Google snapped back at the Belgian court system be refusing to post a copy of the court order and all accompanying text on its website, calling that requirement "unnecessary" and "disproportionate." I have to agree with Google on this one. Where is the law that states Google (or anyone) must publicly post court decisions on its website in any form? There isn't an international treaty that I know of requiring this -- is there?

What European governments continue to not understand here is that Google -- most likely -- is helping drive awareness and traffic to news websites by making content easy to find at its news aggregation site at news.google.com. I'm quite sure most Belgian news websites would not have a global audience if customers did not find aggregated content at Google News (which feature short news excerpts only) -- then visited the website to read the "full story". Google then becomes the marketer for that newspaper at zero expense. The Belgian government must be living in a state of perpetual reverse these days.

Google shares closed down today to end the mid-week trading session at $380.14, a drop of $4.22 or 1.10% from Tuesday's close. With Google announcing today that the search leader will be providing access to 200 years or historical printed newspaper articles and material, there was reaction across the web today, with some people comparing this to Google's ambitious project to scan and digitize the world's libraries for inclusion in its index. This, as you may know, has brought furor from publishers and copyright holders worldwide.

On the other side of the coin, Google has finally unveiled a version of its popular AdWords advertising program to be displayed on mobile phones when a customer processes a search using the mobile Internet browser on his or her cellphone. While the ads look to be text-based and very similar to existing Google ads displayed on a computer screen when a standard Google search is performed, my question is this -- how many users and unique searches does Google track using its Google Mobile service? Is this heavily used?

Before I would get interested in this new ad platform from Google, I'd want to know the potential customer base for these ads. With many more mobile users worldwide than PC users, perhaps Google should be promoting the heck out of its Mobile search service? As I've said many times before, a large problem Google has is marketing its products to the world, using whatever medium and method it can.

Google News is already a website I use daily to find world news in just about every imaginable category and it is expanding again, as Tom Taulli wrote about this morning. This time, though, Google News is adding quite a bit of heft as the new Google News will feature over 200 years of archived newspaper stories through Google News. So, instead of present news being such a focus, you can get your fix on news from the last couple of centuries soon.

And, just what does the blogosphere have to say about this rather enlightening Google announcement? Marshall over at TechCrunch sees certain limits in the archives already (but hey, it was just released), Frank over at MarketWatch basically summarizes Google's oldies a bit and John Markoff at the New York Times runs down a nice factual quote that says this new Google archive service helps to index the last part of the "dark web" -- informational pieces that weren't indexed yet anywhere on Google's search engine -- which means they were hard, if not impossible, to find on the web.

Google's apparently goal here is to allow customers to view history as it unfolded using Google News as the ultimate almanac and newspaper source in one centralized location. In what looks like a result of the "20% personal project" time that all Google employees receive to follow personal passions and project dreams, Anurag Acharya, who developed the Google Scholar service, said this: "Users can see how viewpoints changed over time for events, for ideas and for people". That's quite a mission statement for just a sliver of the overall Google universe. The news archive can be found live right now now at Google News already.

Services such as these come from Google employees who dedicate 20% of their work time to pursuing personal projects, although the projects that are approved, like Google News, must be what customers have asked for. When it launched years ago Google News was just this and now the service is indispensable to millions. There comes the pickle: if the Google News service is used voraciously by millions every day why isn't Google making money off it to diversify its revenue from direct Internet searches to its hugely-popular news aggregation site?

One thing that Google has not implemented here with this new service is embedded advertising, like Google AdWords. Google said it has no plans to embed advertising links alongside archive search results, although sites with historical news may choose to feature advertising or charge subscription fees for access to the relevant items, just like normal news websites that Google News links to in its aggregation News site. In my opinion, Google should carefully weigh the effect of its text-based ads and insert them where appropriate into the Google News service as a way to further expand its advertising viewership outside of pure Internet search.

Google's continued mission to bring all the world's information to anyone is causing copyright tussles in many industries. From broadcast journalism to library science Google seems to be ruffling feathers against copyright holders who claim Google can't just make access to copyrighted material accessible to everyone on the planet. Well, why not? Is it not the role of content producers to make that content accessible to anyone and everyone possible?

With Google Images indexing imagery and digital pictures on any web server or website globally that can be accessed by the public -- no matter if it is "hidden" -- the search leader is seeing copyright issues with the owners of such content. For example, a digital reproduction or rendering of a Monet painting being searchable and viewable on Google Images could inflame the legal owner of the original painting.

With Google's mission to bring information access across any content area to anyone in the world with web access, it is sure to continue embroiling itself in copyright controversy as time goes on. Google's services like Google Images and Google News are excellent products and really do make it quite easy to find a single, authoritative index to particular segments of content without wasting hours looking in different places. Along with that comes the wrath Google will probably have to take from the copyright owners of all that content.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.

Many news sources around the world have become slightly angry with Google for aggregating news stories at Google News. This is something I've never understood -- Google basically scans the web looking for news stories in any category and neatly aggregates this content in a nice index, much like it does with everything else it "spiders" on the web.

Yet, news sources want consumers to continue to come directly to their websites (to annoyingly register, probably). Hence, news publishers have been miffed at Google about something so simple and so great for customers -- but customer-pleasing is not what this is all about.

With that said, the Associated Press (AP) and Google have reached an agreement in which Google will pay the AP for stories and images *aggregated* on its news website (not re-used, but aggregated). That aspect of the deal could be intended to support Google's long-held stance that it does not owe anything for simply pointing out news stories and photographs posted on Web sites - an activity that the company's lawyers maintain is protected under "fair use" protections under copyright law.

I completely agree with Google's stance here from the source story -- it should be completely protected by fair use laws for aggregating content. Yet, some news outlets just cannot get this, and will never get it. Perhaps suppliers in Sears catalogs should be paying for inclusion into the catalog as well, even with the free advertising and promotion they receive? Ehh, the new world of information is lost on the old guard of news, as usual.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.

Like millions of people, I visit Google every day – and often visit Google News. Then again, I write quite a bit and want to know what's already out there . As for Google News, it effectively aggregates huge amounts of content, ranging from blogs to major publications. Hey, it even collects posts from BloggingStocks.com (I also did a recent piece on Google News for BloggingStocks.com).

For example, today I visited Google News to check out the stories on, interestingly enough, a new company that wants to help traditional publications deal with the threat from Google News. The company is called Inform. It has a group of talented employees – including linguists, taxonomists, mathematicians and computer scientists – that has developed algorithms to better categorize online content (such as by tagging things like products, persons, stock quotes and so on).

A group of traditional publications, such as Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, The New York Sun, NewsOK.com, The Huffington Post, The Deal LLC, and NameMedia, are using it to provide more content options for its readers. So, if you go to an article, you will see in-depth links to the publication's own archive, as well as outside content. The idea is that readers have more reasons to go to the sites of traditional publications.

I talked to Julian Steinberg, who is with Inform: "Google News broke new ground and showed consumers the power of topical surfing for news. Other agile, fast moving new media firms (topix.net, Digg) followed and made topical surfing the expected behavior. Traditional media unfortunately took too long and allowed a 'walled garden' thinking to reign. Soon the whole paradigm changed with a large percent of users coming in sideways and leaving sideways. Traditional media has started to realize that they need to co-opt this disruptive technology or risk ceding news' online point of entry to search engines."

Krishna Bharat is the principal scientist at Google.  He also invented Google News. He got the idea for Google News after September 11th – since he thought it would be a good idea to aggregate news around particular topics.

He recently gave a presentation at the International Press Institute Congress in Edinburgh. His message: newspapers need to do more than just reprint articles on the Web. That is, they need to leverage the Web's inherent advantages.

Suggestions:
• Link to other stories (actually, CNET does a good job at this).
• Allow for personalization (such as filtering to your preferences – as well as learn about your preferences).
• Open up archives.
• Link to rich resources, such as Wikipedia.
• Allow reader participation (eg, blogs)

So, is Google News a threat to newspapers?  Maybe.