Google Still Monkeying With Content Owners

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 29, 9:41AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Stocks: (GOOG)

Google seems to take one step forward and two steps back in its dispute with content owners over whether they can post their headlines. Or, is that two steps forward and one step back.

Google settled its battle with two news organizations in Belgium. But, some Belgian newspapers and copyright advocates are still complaining. Loudly.

And, the AFP news agency in France is still in US court trying to get Google to pay it $17.5 million. Google has cut a deal with the Associated Press to run its content. For pay.

Google claims that its spiders 4,500 news sources to constantly update its database. While it would by hyperbole to say that there may be 4,500 copyright infringment suits out there, it is safe to say that the French and Belgians are not the only parties that would be upset by Google’s actions.

SInce Google does not appear to run its text ads on the news search pages, it is hard to assess damage, unless it is linking to material that customers have to pay for.

The issue isn’t resolved. And, it won’t be for a long, long time.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.