Quote:
Originally Posted by Xellos-_^
So why don't they just make it a pay only site?
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Google makes money (or at last, attracts eyeballs, which for them comes to the same thing) by copying the contents of the newspapers, even if it's just first page stuff and the rest of the article is a members only area (which hardly ever happens).
The only way for the papers to stop Google would be to ask to be dereferenced. But I'm sure you can see the problem: no Google referencement, (almost) no visitors.
It's a symbiotic relationship, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily a fair one. (A lot like the relationship between farmers and supermarket chains, for example.)
And they may be looking to make it more symbiotic by pushing out the competition from smaller enterprises... (For example: Google does give them money, and maybe pride of place in search results, but the papers ask to be dereferenced from smaller search engines.)