Brazil Newspapers Ban Google News. Their Message: Pay Up or Go Away

Brazil's Google News

Newspapers accounting for 90% of the circulation in Brazil have abandoned Google News. Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers says all 154 members had followed its recommendation to ban the search engine aggregator from using their content

The papers say Google News refused to pay for content and was driving traffic away from their websites. Google said previously that the service boosted traffic to news websites.

“Staying with Google News was not helping us grow our digital audiences, on the contrary,” said the association’s president, Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto.

“By providing the first few lines of our stories to Internet users, the service reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our websites,” he said, in an interview with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

The National Association of Newspapers, known by its Portuguese acronym ANJ, carried out an experiment with Google that began in December 2010.

This allowed Google News to carry the top line of news stories, to raise curiosity and get readers to click on the full story on the newspapers’ sites.

But the ANJ says the experiment has failed. Among the 154 titles that have pulled out from Google News are some of the country’s most important news sites, such as O Globo and O Estado de S. Paulo.

At a recent meeting of the American Press Association in São Paulo, Google defended its decision not to pay for the headlines from news websites.

“Google News channels a billion clicks to news sites around the world,” said Google’s Public Policy Director, Marcel Leonardi. He compared the ANJ’s demands to taxing a taxi driver for taking tourists to eat at a particular restaurant.

Brazil’s newspaper association said that, despite leaving Google News, many of the news organizations’ Internet portals will still be listed by the aggregator.

Internet users using Google – but not Google News – will still be able to find content from most newspapers’ sites, said the statement.

Mercopress

Tags:

You May Also Like

Brazil Wins Another Round Against EU Trade Barriers

Brazil gained another victory in its war against protectionist barriers erected by the European ...

Brazil’s Bradesco Bank Joins Amex, and Google to Fight Child Porno

Brazilian bank Bradesco has become the First Institution in the Latin America region to ...

RAPIDINHAS

Slam-bang Guga Gustavo Kuerten, who every Brazilian is calling Guga these days, is tennis’ ...

Jobs in Brazil Up for 3rd Month in a Row

Industrial employment in Brazil grew 0.2% in July, the third gain in as many ...

Brazil Ready to Push Its Fruit on US, China and the Arab World

Conducted by the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex), the Brazilian Fruit Institute ...

Voices Rise Against “Gaza Wall” Around Rio Favela, in Brazil

Environmentalists, human rights activists and residents of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are opposing plans ...

Ties with Venezuela Will Bring More Freedom, Says Brazil’s Lula

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared, today, in Caracas, Venezuela, that South ...

Brazil in New York Wooing Foreign Investors

The São Paulo Stock Exchange (Bovespa), Brazil’s most important stock market, sent a task ...

Immigration Sting in the US Nabs Dozens of Illegal Brazilians

For more than a year a US immigration agent posed as a corrupt official ...

Despite EU Embargo Brazil’s Honey Export Grows 70%. US Gets 90% of It

The international scenario remains favorable to Brazilian honey. Despite the obstacles, such as the ...