We give publishers $5 bn a year: Google

LONDON, UK: Search giant Google hit back at the accusation that it is unfairly profiting from newspaper and magazine content and claimed that it shared $5 billion of online ad revenues with print publishers in the last year.

Countering the allegations of the mainstream media, Google’s UK director Matt Brittin said publishers are doing very nicely out of the search company and it is working hard to help publishers improve digital revenues. Siting a Guardian report, he said AdSense advertising platform helps publishers generate revenue from their content and last year this earning was to the tune of $5 billion.

He said Google’s technology is not part of the problem but “part of the solution” and added that the search engine sent around a billion clicks a month to the websites of newspapers and magazines.

“We are a technology company, not a media company,” he said. “We are run by a team of scientists and technologists, so what we focus on is understanding how people are using technology and trying to make technology find what they want,” Brittin said while addressing the FIPP World Magazine Congress in London on Wednesday.

Many newspaper bosses, including The Guardian Media Group and Rupert Murdoch had accused services such as Google News of using news content from other mainstream media without any direct payment.

'The Wall Street Journal' editor Robert Thomson had even dubbed Google as Internet parasite, as it benefited from aggregating content from 'The Wall Street Journal' and other newspapers.

According to Brittin, when users browse the web, their focus is on individual stories rather than newspaper or magazine brands. Google searches for celebrity gossip stories have increased 485 per cent since 2005, while searches for magazine brands have grown just 225 per cent, he pointed out.

'Google Good for Journalism'

Meanwhile, Marissa Mayer, vice president, Search Products and User Experience at Google defended the search giant's stand and said Google can be good for journalism.

While addressing the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, as part of a hearing on 'The Future of Journalism', she said that though Google does not pay newspapers for the links to articles it posts on Google News the links drive traffic to newspaper websites.

"Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than one billion clicks per month," she said.

She claimed that newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue.