Newspapers Taking Aim @ Google

Gotta love old media -- threatened by a changing economic landscape, they do what the threatened usually do -- they lash out first. This is starting to happen as Google News leaves beta and hits prime time. Google News provides an aggregating service, where they scan world of online media and provide a few lines of content to give a potential reader a sampling of what the article may entail. Then, they send content to the publisher. Sounds like a library to me. Sounds like a good deal for the newspapers too. They get more traffic to their site. This is no different than other aggregators -- or aggregating software that leverages RSS feeds. What these old media types are really pissed about is the fact that Google is making money. Of course they're making money! They've become the distributor! Old media however doesn't get left out, like they would have you believe. They get increased traffic.

Google should let those who wish to opt out, opt out. It should be a simple matter of telling webcrawlers not to follow the links into their sites. I'd love to see to who's the first to opt out.