Last but not least: take and give

Ringier CEO Marc Walder is not the only one who seems taken with the idea of taking a slice of Google's profit pie - after all, the search engine provider is practicing "a modern kind of theft in digital form" (Werbewoche.ch reported). Sonntagszeitung editor-in-chief Martin Spieler also writes in his editorial that freedom on the internet takes on a different meaning "when companies like Google claim it for themselves in order to earn billions at the expense of others".

That sounds really dramatic at first glance. Even if it is not entirely clear where exactly the problem lies. Although Google lists and links online content from newspaper publishers and places the usual advertising, it also brings the portals the important streams of visitors who in turn pay attention to the websites' advertising. Anyone who does not want to be tracked by Google can prevent this. But nobody does, because who wants to miss out on the numerous visitors and leave the topicality and attention field to the competition?

So you might think that the relationship between Google and the news sites is based on a mutual give and take. No wonder, then, that the search engine giant sees no urgent need to change this (Werbewoche.ch reported). Perhaps the Swiss Media Association should send Blick.ch into the race more often in its attempts to negotiate. The site appears to have a constructive relationship with Google. The permission to download Google's YouTube videos, add its own watermark to them and then play them embedded in its own advertising on its own video portal is impressive. This is because Google cedes advertising sovereignty to the news site and does not even require a link to the original source in return. Meanwhile, less privileged online portals embed the videos with the code provided for this purpose. An uninformed rogue who... Perhaps Google is not such an evil digital data thief after all, as Mr. Walder claims. (hae)