They want to stop appearing in Google search results as long as Google isn't paying them for the right to present those results, which I think is an important distinction to make.

Playing devil's advocate a bit, from the AP's perspective, how is Google really any different than any other distributor of AP content? It's just another company using their content to hang ads off of and generate revenue (like all of their other customers), except that Google doesn't pay for it.

AP makes money from volume, lots of papers subscribing to their feed. Google means that fewer papers are needed (it just needs to index one, doesn't it?), chopping the AP's customer base down and eventually making their current model completely obsolete. Seeing the writing on the wall and trying to prevent it from happening, that's not evidence they don't get it, that's evidence they get it all too well but just have no idea what to do about it.

Any thoughts on what to do about it? As far as I can tell, nobody has really figured it out yet, have they?

> Playing devil's advocate a bit, from the AP's perspective, how is Google really any different than any other distributor of AP content? It's just another company using their content to hang ads off of and generate revenue (like all of their other customers), except that Google doesn't pay for it.

Seriously? Google links out to the original copy. You see a headline and at most a couple sentences. If there's a fulltext copy it is licensed.

Yes, of course they do. But before you click through, there are a bunch of ads displayed off to the side. And Google just exposes the one newspaper that they're sending the traffic to, so the one with the best SEO wins while everyone else goes out of business, directly threatening the AP's bottom line.

So what's the AP going to do? They can restructure their rates so they capture more from the winners, and/or they can hit the whole ad stack (which Google is the first layer of, now). I mean, really, what else do you expect them to do? Just wither and die?

Another way to say it: when the distribution of a pile of money across a group of companies shifts from normal to power law, and you were getting paid by that group, you had better figure out how you're going to get more money out of the winners as the losers start dropping out.

"the one with the best SEO wins while everyone else goes out of business, directly threatening the AP's bottom line."

Versus what? The AP is somehow going to benevolently distribute all paid links equally amongst all of its various print client to help them all reach each month's traffic goals?

Um, no. What did I say that suggested that? Did you read the article? They're going to try to change their model so that they get paid more by the companies that are shifting to the spiky end of the emerging power law distribution, and capturing revenue from the whole ad stack.

AP's headlines and first sentences are probably their most valuable product.

I've been wondering whether the sight of various big, classic newspapers going bankrupt was going to spark some confused and panicked moves.

This sure could be one of them.

There's a reason this is a coordinated effort. No single newspaper would want to lose the incoming traffic from Google News, people would just go read from their competitors article. If they all act together, then A.P. thinks they might get some money out of Google. But these are the internets baby, if you will not let Google index it, someone else will.

The reason these newspapers aren't going after, say Drudgereport, is that they figure they can get some money out of Google. Fair use or not, why is Google rich and not the papers?

I'm having a hard time resisting the schadenfreude.

I doubt Google is even making much money off Google News. The wire services probably believe Google is making all the money they're losing, but that is just not the case: the pie is shrinking.

From the sounds of it they're still in the mindset where they want to do things their own way and not have to worry about the web. It's kind of sweet in a way, and I feel some sympathy for their operation. You spend however long doing things one way, it's comfortable, and you just want to lock out everything else.

The problem, of course, is that as old forms of media die, the rule is "shift or be shafted," and the AP is likely not powerful enough to take on indexing and last.

The article states that Google was not mentioned, and that legal licensees of the content (like Google is) would not be sued. Finally, the gist of the article is that publishers do not want their content appearing on unauthorized ad-supported sites, and Google does not appear to display full articles outside of the AP feed it licenses.