Digital Media Buzz > Does Google Really Control The News?

Does Google Really Control The News?

By: techcrunch.com

Once again, Google is the favorite bogeyman responsible for the rapid deterioration in the health of the news industry. This time it is Nick Carr doing the finger-pointing, describing Google as the most powerful middleman in news: When a middleman controls a market, the supplier has no real choice but to work with the middleman - even if the middleman makes it impossible for the supplier to make money.

So how powerful is Google when it comes to parceling out traffic to news sites? If you are talking about Google News, the answer is that it is not quite as powerful as you might think. In the U.S., Google News is overshadowed by both Yahoo News and even the sites controlled by the New York Times (which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com, HeraldTribune.com, and several other newspaper sites). According to comScore, Google News attracted 16.2 million unique visitors in the U.S. in February, compared to 42.3 million for Yahoo News and 46.2 million for the sites operated by New York Times Digital……[read entire article]