Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp., just sent a monumentally cynical letter to the EU attacking Google, matching the letter from a posse of European publishers led by Germany’s Axel Springer and another public letter from that company’s head, Mathia Döpfner. These supposed bastions of conservative thinking are running to the government they all disdain to try to get unfair advantage on Google because — simply put — they have failed in the marketplace on their own. The internet and defeated them. They are crying uncle. On Newsgenius, I annotated Thomson’s letter….
8 responses to “A most cynical letter from a most cynical company”
-
Jeff, what’s cynical about his letter? In the interests of disclosure(I used to work with Thompson at the FT). Your highlights highlight his concerns and they are legitimate.
Saying the Internet won are you saying Google is the Internet?! Well, $GOOG is becoming the Internet in many ways but the Internet is supposed to be a public resource not a private business that works in promoting the interests of a minority (its shareholders).
-
Does Tom not know that each highlighted text will bring up a pointed comment by Jeff. Also of note he does not know how to spell Roberts last name, even when Jeff used it several times and the letter closes with his name…..
JJ’s comments on the different sections of Thomson’s letter, I found illuminating and to the point. It seems to be Bob’s letter is just a lot of sour grapes and whining, without the gooey cheese … ah! now I’m hungry.
In closing, I’ve been a fan of TWIG since it started and of TWIT since the early years. I hope it continues for many more year….. Oh JJ, I to have used the Chromebook as my primary machine, though right now my Granddaughter is using for homework…I was one of the testers of the first Chromebook (CR-48) which I gave to my mom….
-
It’s cynical because NewsCorp purports to champion the free market, yet demands “big government” intervention when it fails in that same free market.
Further – a few years ago, NewsCorp toyed with the idea of de-listing all of its content from Google and make a pact with Microsoft to grant exclusive access for all of its content to Bing (http://www.cnet.com/news/can-news-corp-afford-calling-googles-bluff/). That didn’t pan out because NewsCorp knows it profits enormously from the traffic Google brings to its web properties.
Thompsons’ concerns are completely illegitimate. Saying that Google is stealing when it captures excerpts of news articles to accompany search results is the equivalent of saying that Fox News is “stealing” every time its anchors quote news reports from other news media or use images and video they did not create in the course of reporting. Even if that weren’t the case and NewsCorp actually believed indexing web content is “stealing” – NewsCorp could demand all of its content be de-listed from Google and they would comply … but they don’t.
Google is not the Internet – no one is required to use it to access content on the Internet. Google has the majority of search engine market share because they consistently provide the best service and value (the free market at work).
-
Last time I checked, Google was a company about signals and data. If people give it the signal that they don’t want to read articles by certain papers or contributors, then so be it. It is about he USER experience. Let them decide as it should be on the net, not some conglomerate running off to government to ultimately buy protection or slow down their demise as the theory of evolution takes over.
-
[…] Jeff Jarvis, a long-time critic of Rupert Murdoch and the author of “What would Google Do?” called the letter, “A most cynical letter from a most cynical company[4].” […]
-
[…] Jeff Jarvis, a long-time critic of Rupert Murdoch and the author of “What would Google Do?” called the letter, “A most cynical letter from a most cynical company[4].” […]
-
[…] on an exchange of words between the two companies. It noted that some industry observers, like journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, believe that news organizations want to see Google reined in because they can’t compete […]
-
Mr. Jeff Jarvis is utterly correct.
-
[…] Unfortunately, Thomson’s letter received about as much fact-checking as a News Corp tabloid. (Jeff Jarvis has already annotated the letter’s “staggering” “willful blindness to irony” on the News Genius […]
-
[…] A most cynical letter from a most cynical company […]
-
[…] A most cynical letter from a most cynical company — BuzzMachine […]
-
Googles “Dear Rupert” reply to this letter is brilliant: http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/dear-rupert_25.html
Lest the EC remember that Murdoch’s folks were guilty of hacking murdered schoolchildrens phones, over and above never letting facts get in the way of a good story…
-
Where’s the actual letter? I’m curious to see if it was edited.
