In the FlyOnTheWall.com case, Google wrote a "Friend of the Court" brief in support of the news aggregator; writing an opposing one, was, of all media companies, the Associated Press. That was in June 2010.
On Monday August 30th, Monday, August 30, 2010, Josh Cohen, Senior Business Product Manager for Google News, made this announcement on its blog:
We’ve extended our existing licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. We look forward to future collaborations, including on ways Google and AP can work together to create a better user experience and new revenue opportunities.
Google has done a deal with a sworn enemy of blogs and bloggers, and that has contributed to the chain of events leading to the massacre of blogs from Google News. Google News has become to blogs, what Anakin Skywalker is to the Jedi.
This Google Meta Tags project started with Google hearing claims from the Associated Press in 2007 that they were not getting credit for news that started with them. (Of course, this makes you think blogs don't originate news, right?)
Here, Google News was, back then, working to protect The Associated Press from it's own ineptitude regarding the Online World. The issue then was what Google, undoubtedly directed by the AP, called "duplicate content." Google's Josh Cohen, who's emerging as a major player in this issue, wrote:
By removing duplicate articles from our results, we’ll be able to surface even more stories and viewpoints from journalists and publishers from around the world. This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers' most highly valued content: original content. Previously, some of this content could be harder to find on Google News, and as a result of this change, you'll have easier access to more of this content, and publishers will likely receive more traffic to their original content.
Because the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press don't have a consumer website where they publish their content, they have not been able to benefit from the traffic that Google News drives to other publishers. As a result, we’re hosting it on Google News.
In other words, Google helped the AP because the AP lacked its own website? That's nuts, but that's what was written by Google's Mr. Cohen in 2007. But the point is, at the same time The Associated Press was railing against bloggers and fair-use, it found an ear in the case of Google's Cohen.
The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse were two media companies working against Google Legal in the FlyOnTheWall.com case. But that was not Google News, it was Google Legal. Google News actions seemed to be working against Google's overall legal strategy for some years, until 2010.
Now, Google News actions and relationship with the Associated Press, have been expressed in a new system to kick out bloggers. What masks this, are blind and stupid claims that Google's cleaning out the spammy publishers. Even Google's Matt Cutts said this; he's obviously not informed. Because if Cutts were informed, he would admit that Google News is not being honest, because giant 380,000 person content farms like Associated Content, which do produce spammy posts, are still on Google News.
In other words, a big company like Google does not always have people who work "as one" unit. To state, again, there seems to be deep internal conflicts within Google, but they need to rein in Google News before The Associated Press winds up owning it via squatter's rights.
And a note, for bloggers, use of social bookmarks and Twitter are a great alternative to Google News. It's worked for Zennie62.com.
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