Germany v Google

20/01/10 posted by Liz Niland

German newspapers and magazines have launched an attack on Google, venting their anger about the revenue Google makes from search advertising compared to the lack of money publishers make as a result of allowing Google to index their pages. As reported on Techdirt, a spokesman for the German Newspaper Publishers Association, Hans-Joachim Fuhrmann, was quoted as saying that “Google says it brings us traffic, but the problem is that Google earns billions, and we earn nothing.”

This is the other side of search engine optimisation: Google don’t put sales in your lap if you don’t work to make the most of your site’s traffic. Mr Fuhrmann, clearly unwittingly, solved his problem himself - Google does bring you traffic, but, unless your revenue model is solely based on display advertising, merely relying on traffic levels is unlikely to bring in the big dollars. This argument is an echo of the Murdoch v Google debacle, born out of traditionally minded publishers unwilling to upgrade their model to the changing online landscape.      

Although we brought you word of the Apple tablet launch yesterday, the latest reports today mention the prospect of a few other launch buddies, including the iPhone 4.0 and a batch of software updates. Rumours have been swirling for sometime regarding the next version of the iPhone, but all accounts point to some sort of confirmation of key iPhone 4.0 features (such as multi-touch, multi-tasking and other UI changes)  at next week’s big Apple event. And, don’t feel cheated if you’ve not long purchased a 3G or 3GS handset; the 4.0 software should be available as an upgrade.

In Twitter news, another hint about the company’s future money-making plans have been reported by SMH. According to recent reports, the social networking site is looking for fresh faces to work specifically towards monetisation. While we mentioned last year about co-founder Biz Stone’s cryptic plans for “non-traditional” revenue raising, SMH notes that an advertised position would focus on “enhancing business users’ understanding of the value of Twitter”. I think we can safely assume a “premium” (read: paid) version of Twitter will soon be on its way for business users.