Google’s dominance in search engine scene has caused the company to face fresh antitrust charges. News Corp. -the mass media house and parent company of the Wall Street Journal has accused Google of unfair content-scrapping.
News Corp. charged that Google takes news from its websites and makes it available within its search results. This way of showing content from sites can lead a visitor to consume content without actually visiting the originating site -eventually hurting its business.
News Cop has further alleged that if a company wants to keep their scraped content out of Google’s search results, they have no way other then to give up on having links to its stories show up in Google searches. This custom is an abuse of Google’s dominance in search engine market, said the complaint.
“The European Commission is already investigating allegations that Google copies or “scrapes” rival Web content, but so far hasn’t issued any formal charges in the area,” states the Wall Street Journal report.
Now that the matter is under investigation, it will be interesting to see where this leads. Google’s “content scrapping” of articles and showing them in search results can help publishers receive hits. As the News Corp complaint suggests, this can also lead visitors to consume the content to some extent -without visiting the site.
This sounds like potential movie-goers abandoning their plans after watching promos or readers not buying a book after reading a preview. Can publishers or movie maker stop this from happening? Or should they pay attention on making the content better?
What do you think? Does Google’s practice benefit publishers or causes more harm than doing good. Let us know your thoughts.
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