The Impact of Google

1) Why has Google led to the decline of the newspaper industry?

Certain people believe that Google has had a knock down effect on the newspaper industry is because in the early 2000's Google made barely any money from advertising and traditional newspapers were making over $40bn which equates to 60% of all advertising. Now the roles have reversed and newspapers have a much lower income from advertising due to websites like Craigslist and the main corporate; Google. Google made over $44bn in 2012 which is $4bn more than the revenue from newspaper advertising in 2000.

2) Do you personally think Google is to blame for newspapers closing and journalists losing their jobs? Why?

I don't think Google is to blame, the traditional newspaper is outdated as we live in a world where we can instantly access news articles and stories for free on the internet, whether it's UGC or a factual news story from a giant like the BBC. Newspapers are more expensive than an online search, they're a hassle to carry and younger people rarely read papers because of what's available on the internet. Also since anyone can now access the internet and post anything they want, there's tons of user generated content out there such as bloggers so we have many sources of information to access rather than just a couple like in the past.

3) Read the comments below the article. Pick one comment you agree with and one you disagree with and justify your opinions in detail.

1.

"Obviously, Google is not to blame. I don’t think it’s about blame. I think the Internet is incredibly poorly designed. Rather than being free, everything on it should cost something in order to compensate creators. We have a proven system for doing this through organizations like ASCAP and BMI. The principal of royalties for profiting from the content of others is well established. Google came along, and, at least in the case of Youtube, knowingly robbed content creators for years in order to build up the business. The ideal system would be one in which every click resulted in a nano-charge on your phone bill, maybe 1/1000 of a cent for a news story, for example. Sites like Google that link to other sites could also pay in very tiny increments."

I agree with the person to an extent however the part about charging for every article and so on is stupid, news websites already have advertising so they make money out of that. Besides how would that even benefit the traditional newspaper not an online business. 

2.

"The irony is that Google is probably more of a savior than a killer of journalism and editorial content. How many thousands of blogs, fan sites, writers, startup outlets, etc., have been discovered by Google’s search algorithms? How many talented artists and great stories have found a launching pad on YouTube and other Google outlets? How much content has been spread into new languages due to Google translate?


Google has forced journalistic outlets to innovate and search for new ways of doing things. It has made information dissemination more efficient. While at times that has been bad for the average journalist trying to make a buck, from a big picture perspective, it has been good for helping people get access to information, and that includes journalism."

I agree with this comment 100% as Google enabled normal average people to be journalists, we all now have more sources of information to use to be able to base our opinions on etc. Also yes it means they won't make as much money (journalists) due to the wide variety of content but that's better than the public having less information to access. It's a fair trade-off.