Selfish Google Stands to Kill Golden News Goose

By refusing to share revenue with news providers, Google is essentially dooming itself, writes blogger Steve Outing, who has a message for CEO Eric Schmidt: “What’s the deal, Mr. Schmidt? Have you deleted Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ mantra from the corporate mission statement?” Hoarding ad revenue will ultimately cause Google News to lose the content it now links to.

Unless revenues are shared, good journalism will be forced behind pay walls, Outing observes, “a panicking-publisher movement that appears unstoppable.” Big media and start-ups will suffer alike: “a once strong watchdog press [will] lose its fangs.” By Schmidt’s own admission, much of the information on the Internet is “a sewer”—and by refusing to help, Schmidt is allowing “the content universe that Google News tracks to get a bit smellier.” (More Eric Schmidt stories.)