Google’s offering $340 million in free ad credits during COVID-19. Here’s what you need to know to maximize your efforts and not only survive, but thrive!

The post How to Advertise your Products on Google for Free During COVID-19 appeared first on WooCommerce.

For those looking for a way to optimize your search results on your WordPress blog. You may want to check out the following plugin. Goolge Highlight It will highlight or colorize the background of any letter or word that you search for. Head over to the site to see it, or do a search on […]

The post Google Highlight appeared first on WPCult.

At Google IO June 27-29 the Android platform will be on display. Direct from a recent slamdown legal court grudge win against Java steward Oracle, the Android crew will be able to tell you  about what is new and what is upcoming in Android, how you can monetize Google apps, multiversioning and more. Much will Read the rest...

Google’s ranking algorithm continues to get more and more complex, and the Ranking Factors 2020: Facts and Myths infographic from Link-Assistant tries to break through some of the misinformation that’s out there.

It seems a little while ago that Google hinted at having 200+ ranking factors. Though in fact, it happened in the year of 2009, and we are heading to 2020 now.

Google has drastically evolved over the past ten years. Today, neural matching — an AI-based method — processes about 30% of all searches, and Google can recognize concepts behind keywords. They have introduced RankBrain, mobile-first indexing, and HTTPS. As we need to adapt to changes and find ways to get atop of SERPs, the topic of ranking factors remains as fresh as ever.

So let's have a look at what ranking factors to consider in 2020, and what ranking myths to leave behind.

I have mixed feelings about this infographics design:

Good:

• It’s a concise summary of very complex information that’s laid out in the more detailed, full article.

• The infographic is a handy reference sheet and great for use in social media as promotion for the article.

• Clean arrangement that’s easy to read from top-to-bottom

Bad:

• Almost all text.

• Not that there’s much data that could have been visualized with charts, but some visual design elements would have made the infographic easier to read and more enticing to readers.

• Text URL to the article! When the infographic gets shared, how are readers supposed to find the article when it’s not linked??? Put it in the footer on the infographic!

Want to create “Google Forms style” forms for your WordPress website? A lot of publishers choose Google Forms to create a survey because it provides a distraction-free landing page dedicated to the form. If you want to create a distraction-free landing page specifically for your form, but don’t want to use a third-party app, like […]

The post How to Create a “Google Forms Style” Form in WordPress appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.

Looking to build an online form on your WordPress site? Not sure whether you should use WPForms or Google Forms? Both WPForms and Google Forms are two great options for small and medium scale businesses. But when you dig deeper, you’ll find a few key differences between these 2 form builders. To help you find […]

The post WPForms vs. Google Forms – Which One is Best? (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.

When it comes to your blog’s position within search engine results, there’s far more than just sheer luck at play. Search Engine Optimisation is a skill that any content creator – professional or amateur – should develop in order to make their content as discoverable as possible. It involves making certain tweaks to your blog […]

Original post: 3 Ways to Optimise Blog Content so it Ranks Well on Google

The post 3 Ways to Optimise Blog Content so it Ranks Well on Google appeared first on Daily Blog Tips.

Are there still folks among you who, like me, prefer handwriting to typing? If you’re in this group, you’ll love this new feature on Google Lens. The app now lets you scan your handwritten notes, copy them, and paste them straight to your computer. I gave it a spin, and I bring you my impressions […]

The post Google Lens now copies handwritten text and pastes it straight to your computer appeared first on DIY Photography.

Most currently available schemes for performance based ranking of Universities or Research organizations, such as, Quacarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), Shanghai University based All Research of World Universities (ARWU) use a variety of criteria that include productivity, citations, awards, reputation, etc., while Leiden and Scimago use only bibliometric indicators. The research performance evaluation in the aforesaid cases is based on bibliometric data from Web of Science or Scopus, which are commercially available priced databases. The coverage includes peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Google Scholar (GS) on the other hand, provides a free and open alternative to obtaining citations of papers available on the net, (though it is not clear exactly which journals are covered.) Citations are collected automatically from the net and also added to self created individual author profiles under Google Scholar Citations (GSC). This data was used by Webometrics Lab, Spain to create a ranked list of 4000+ institutions in 2016, based on citations from only the top 10 individual GSC profiles in each organization. (GSC excludes the top paper for reasons explained in the text; the simple selection procedure makes the ranked list size-independent as claimed by the Cybermetrics Lab). Using this data (Transparent Ranking TR, 2016), we find the regional and country wise distribution of GS-TR Citations. The size independent ranked list is subdivided into deciles of 400 institutions each and the number of institutions and citations of each country obtained for each decile. We test for correlation between institutional ranks between GS TR and the other ranking schemes for the top 20 institutions.

See the Code - See it Full Page - See Details

After seeing the amazing [pen](https://codepen.io/oliviale/full/GRpvNBa) from [@Olivia Ng](https://codepen.io/oliviale/pen/GRpvNBa) this is my attempt on the google meets interface. You can "send me" messages in the chat tab. Warning: You won't actually be sending me any messages.

This Pen uses: Pug, SCSS, JavaScript, and

Google says most of its employees will likely be allowed to work remotely through the end of year. In a companywide meeting Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said employees who needed to work in the office would be allowed to return in June or July with enhanced safety measures in place. The rest would likely continue working from home, a Google spokesperson told NPR. Google had originally told employees work-from-home protocols would be in place at least through June 1. Facebook also said it would allow most of its employees to work remotely through the end of 2020, according to media reports. The company had previously announced it was canceling large events through June 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both companies began telling employees to stay home in March . Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stories with a Heartbeat is a new WUNC podcast about the human condition in conflict. Host Will McInerney is an award-winning poet who travels the globe exploring conflict and what it says about us as people. Stories with a Heartbeat taps into the power of poetry, stories, music, and conversation to help us decipher conflict and find meaning.

Home audio is not the only segment that the two firms are targeting. Other products in the range include lights, crockery, furniture, and other knick-knacks like a reflective raincoat and a cajón. Some of the devices like the speakers and smart lighting bulbs can be connected together.

With about a million products available on its website, Tolexo is among the largest B2B ecommerce sites in the country, serving 2.5 lakh businesses.

Google says most of its employees will likely be allowed to work remotely through the end of year. In a companywide meeting Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said employees who needed to work in the office would be allowed to return in June or July with enhanced safety measures in place. The rest would likely continue working from home, a Google spokesperson told NPR. Google had originally told employees work-from-home protocols would be in place at least through June 1. Facebook also said it would allow most of its employees to work remotely through the end of 2020, according to media reports. The company had previously announced it was canceling large events through June 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both companies began telling employees to stay home in March . Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

I use Google Photos on my Android phone to back up my photos and videos to the cloud. As I have been known to occasionaly loose my phone I really like this feature. But, I can't find an option to not download photos back to my phone. The result is that as soon as I enable backup&sync ALL my photos get downloaded and my storage is full. I would like to have only backup and no sync. Is there a solution for that besides using another app?

Two organizations I belong to publish Google calendars of events. I would like to subscribe to these from my Macintosh and iPhone, so they appear on the calendars I look at every day. I don't want to change which calendar apps I use. How can I do this most easily? On the Macintosh I use Apple's calendar app. On the iPhone I use Fantastical (which is just accessing the same calendar data that Apple's iOS calendar uses).

The shared calendars I want to access have not been made available in ical format. Is there any way I can subscribe to them from my Mac and iPhone?

More details follow:

I also have a Google calendar which I do not use except when I am forced to by other aspects of the Google ecosystem (e.g. Google Meet invitations).

The shared Google calendars I want to see are not public. They relate to kid things so they can't be public. I've been invited to join these calendars. When I click the invitation link they get added to my Google calendar. So when I go to calendar.google.com I see my own Google calendar, and I also see that I am subscribed to these other calendars and I see their events in their own colors.

I have subscribed to my Google calendar from my Macintosh and my iPhone by adding my Google account to those devices. However, that only brings in the events from my own Google calendar. It doesn't transitively bring in the calendars that I'm subscribed to via my Google calendar. Is there a way I can make it do that?

I would rather not ask the calendar owners to make changes to their calendars, but I will if that's the only way to get these calendars onto my Mac and iPhone. If that's necessary, what should I tell them to do? I don't want to ask them for an iCal link, because then they would have to manually retrieve and send out that link to everyone wha wants it. Ideally they'd be adding iCal capability to the calendar so that anyone with access could subscribe to it that way.

So many people use Google calendars and so many people have iPhones and Macs, I'm really hoping this is possible.

Google says most of its employees will likely be allowed to work remotely through the end of year. In a companywide meeting Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said employees who needed to work in the office would be allowed to return in June or July with enhanced safety measures in place. The rest would likely continue working from home, a Google spokesperson told NPR. Google had originally told employees work-from-home protocols would be in place at least through June 1. Facebook also said it would allow most of its employees to work remotely through the end of 2020, according to media reports. The company had previously announced it was canceling large events through June 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both companies began telling employees to stay home in March . Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Google says most of its employees will likely be allowed to work remotely through the end of year. In a companywide meeting Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said employees who needed to work in the office would be allowed to return in June or July with enhanced safety measures in place. The rest would likely continue working from home, a Google spokesperson told NPR. Google had originally told employees work-from-home protocols would be in place at least through June 1. Facebook also said it would allow most of its employees to work remotely through the end of 2020, according to media reports. The company had previously announced it was canceling large events through June 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Both companies began telling employees to stay home in March . Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Der Tech-Konzern besteht in der Virus-Krise auf die Bezahlung von Rechnungen in Millionenhöhe. Das trifft große Anzeigenkunden wie Reiseanbieter besonders. Um ihre Schuld zu begleichen, überweisen sie einen Teil ihrer Hilfskredite direkt an Google.

Karen and Bradley discuss the copyright decision in the Oracle vs. Google case.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:33)

• Bradley mentioned the BPM for the human heart is to the Bee Gee's song, STayin' Alive. (01:55)
• FaiF's bandwidth is provided by OSU-OSL. Please donate to OSU-OSL. (09:50)
• Bradley and Karen discuss the copyright decision in the Oracle vs. Google case. (12:26)
• Bradley couldn't find quickly a full telling of the windings/SCO font thing, but this blog mentions it (29:34)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Bradley and Karen explain why they've been gone for so long, and then discuss the recent Oracle v. Google Federal Appeals Court Decision.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:00:31)

• Karen is now Executive Director of Conservancy and Bradley is President and Distinguished Technologist. (03:01)
• Bradley will be working extensively on the NPO Accounting Project. (03:40)

Segment 1 (00:09:37)

• Karen says the Oracle v. Google Federal Appeals Court Decision is not an engaging read, but the lower court decision was. (09:50)
• Karen said: You're out of your element, Donny! (12:38)
• Karen mentioned a tweet from the EFF (15:23)
• Bradley mentioned his older blog post about the previous decision (16:48)
• Karen incorrectly said we never recorded a show on the previous decision, but we did indeed discuss the previous Oracle v. Google decision in , which Bradley and Karen discussed in Episode 0x35 (18:53)
• Karen and Bradley explained what an affirmative defense, arguments in the alternative, and merger doctrine. (21:03)
• Bradley mentioned the Apache Software Foundation is now publicly more against copyleft software than proprietary software, and that such position is unreasonable, unlike the OpenBSD position that copyleft and proprietary software are equally bad: a position Bradley disagrees with but agrees is consistent, reasonable moral stance. (38:40)
• Bradley mentioned his discussions with Mark J. Wielaard of the Classpath project (52:20)
• Bradley and Karen ask people to doante to Conservancy.

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Don't take this personally, but Google wants your Web search history.

The $130 entry fee is being waived indefinitely, as interest in playing video games surges during the coronavirus pandemic.

Among other things, the development planned to have heated streets to melt ice and snow on contact, as well as sensors that would monitor traffic and protect pedestrians.

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Google reported its weakest revenue growth in nearly five years as the pandemic-driven recession began to shrivel its advertising sales in the first quarter. The January-March earnings for Google parent Alphabet offer a first look at how the digital ad market has fared amid widespread orders requiring consumers to stay at […]

The tech giant announces it is extending its previous work-from-home plans for most of its staff and will begin reopening offices this summer.

This week on DTS, exams in the age of isolation and why students are up in arms about privacy. Plus, the Australian government will compel Google and Facebook to pay local media outlets for content, but exactly what will that look like? And how social media giants are stopping illegal gatherings. Guests: Ariel Bogle, online technology reporter, ABC Science @arielbogle + Seamus Byrne, writer and broadcaster of tech, future, gaming, and digital culture @seamus

Get an update on Google’s controversial proposal to take over the construction and regulation of a section of Toronto; learn about how the ancient Athenians used Tragedy to guide their future decision-making and follow the rush to develop low-orbit satellites to secure the future of the Internet.  

Internet search giant Google is ordered to pay $40,000 in damages to Melbourne lawyer George Defteros after a Supreme Court of Victoria ruling found the internet giant was a publisher, and had defamed the man.

The first milestone in the Federal Government's review of drone noise vindicates community complaints that the unmanned delivery vehicles are loud and obtrusive.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an action under the Lanham Act, seeking cancellation of the GOOGLE trademark on the ground that it is generic, the district court's summary judgment in favor of defendant Google is affirmed where: 1) a claim of genericness or 'genericide,' where the public appropriates a trademark and uses it as a generic name for particular types of goods or services irrespective of its source, must be made with regard to a particular type of good or service; 2) the district court thus correctly focused on internet search engines rather than the 'act' of searching the internet; and 3) the verb use of the word 'google' to mean 'search the internet,' as opposed to adjective use, did not automatically constitute generic use.

Google Lens now lets you copy/paste text from handwritten notes to your laptop!

(California Court of Appeal) - Held that Google, which had initiated arbitration proceedings against two of its former employees, was entitled to obtain discovery from nonparty Uber. Google sought documents relating to Uber's purchase from the two former employees of a self-driving vehicle company called Ottomotto, which Google claimed the two employees created in breach of their contracts and fiduciary duties. Reversing the trial court, the California First Appellate District held that Uber could not withhold the requested documents on grounds of attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine.

(United States DC Circuit) - Held that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were not liable for allegedly conspiring to flood the market of online search results with information about so-called scam locksmiths, in order to extract additional advertising revenue. The Communications Decency Act barred this lawsuit brought by more than a dozen locksmith companies. Affirmed a dismissal.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Reversing a district court determination that Google's use of Oracle's Java Standard Edition platform programming interface in its Android operating system was fair use and decisions denying Oracle's motion for judgment as a matter of law and remanding for a determination of damages.

Iedereen die voor een B2B-bedrijf Google-zoekadvertenties inzet herkent het wel. Voor relevante zoekwoorden die dicht bij een conversie staan, betaal je een hoge CPC. Om dit te omzeilen kiezen veel adverteerders voor brede zoekwoorden, maar dat levert ook irrelevante klikken op van consumenten die je niet wil aantrekken. Nu komt Google met B2B search audiences: […]

Nu we middenin de coronacrisis zitten en we voorlopig ook nog steeds met de beperkende maatregelen hebben te maken, hebben veel bedrijven het moeilijk. We weten niet hoe lang de situatie nog zo blijft. Als er op een bepaald moment nieuwe ontwikkelingen zijn, zoals een versoepeling van de maatregelen, dan wil je natuurlijk zo snel […]

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an action under the Lanham Act, seeking cancellation of the GOOGLE trademark on the ground that it is generic, the district court's summary judgment in favor of defendant Google is affirmed where: 1) a claim of genericness or 'genericide,' where the public appropriates a trademark and uses it as a generic name for particular types of goods or services irrespective of its source, must be made with regard to a particular type of good or service; 2) the district court thus correctly focused on internet search engines rather than the 'act' of searching the internet; and 3) the verb use of the word 'google' to mean 'search the internet,' as opposed to adjective use, did not automatically constitute generic use.

(United States DC Circuit) - Held that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were not liable for allegedly conspiring to flood the market of online search results with information about so-called scam locksmiths, in order to extract additional advertising revenue. The Communications Decency Act barred this lawsuit brought by more than a dozen locksmith companies. Affirmed a dismissal.

Have you heard of Heath Freeman? He's a thirty-something hedge fund boss, who runs "Alden Global Capital," which owns a company misleadingly called "Digital First Media." His business has been to buy up local newspapers around the country and basically cut everything down to the bone, and just milk the assets for whatever cash they still produce, minus all the important journalism stuff. He's been called "the hedge fund asshole", "the hedge fund vampire that bleeds newspapers dry", "a small worthless footnote", the "Gordon Gecko" of newspapers and a variety of other fun things.

Reading through some of those links above, you find a standard playbook for Freeman's managing of newspapers:

These are the assholes who a few years ago bought the Denver Post, once one of the best regional newspapers in the country, and hollowed it out into a shell of its former self, then laid off some more people. Things got so bad that the Post’s own editorial board rebelled, demanding that if “Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here, it should sell the Post to owners who will.”

And here's one of the other links from above telling a similar story:

The Denver newsroom was hardly alone in its misery. In Northern California, a combined editorial staff of 16 regional newspapers had reportedly been slashed from 1,000 to a mere 150. Farther down the coast in Orange County, there were according to industry analyst Ken Doctor, complained of rats, mildew, fallen ceilings, and filthy bathrooms. In her Washington Post column, media critic Margaret Sullivan called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”

And, yes, I think it's fair to say that many newspapers did get a bit fat and happy with their old school monopolistic hold on the news market pre-internet. And many of them failed to adapt. And so, restructuring and re-prioritizing is not a bad idea. But that's not really what's happening here. Alden appears to be taking profitable (not just struggling) newspapers, and squeezing as much money out of them directly into Freeman's pockets, rather than plowing it back into actual journalism. And Alden/DFM appears to be ridiculously profitable for Freeman, even as the journalism it produces becomes weaker and weaker. Jim Brady called it "combover journalism." Basically using skeleton staff to pretend to really be covering the news, when it's clear to everyone that it's not really doing the job.

All of that is prelude to the latest news that Freeman, who basically refuses to ever talk to the media, has sent a letter to other newspaper bosses suggesting they collude to force Google and Facebook to make him even richer.

You can see the full letter here:

Let's go through this nonsense bit by bit, because it is almost 100% nonsense.

These are immensely challenging times for all of us in the newspaper industry as we balance the two equally important goals of keeping the communities we serve fully informed, while also striving to safeguard the viability of our news organizations today and well into the future.

Let's be clear: the "viability" of your newsrooms was decimated when you fired a huge percentage of the local reporters and stuffed the profits into your pockets, rather than investing in the actual product.

Since Facebook was founded in 2004, nearly 2,000 (one in five) newspapers have closed and with them many thousands of newspaper jobs have been lost. In that same time period, Google has become the world's primary news aggregation service, Apple launched a news app with a subsription-based tier and Twitter has become a household name by serving as a distribution service for the content our staffs create.

Correlation is not causation, of course. But even if that were the case, the focus of a well-managed business would be to adapt to the changing market place to take advantage of, say, new distribution channels, new advertising and subscription products, and new ways of building a loyal community around your product. You know, the things that Google, Facebook and Twitter did... which your newspaper didn't do, perhaps because you fired a huge percentage of their staff and re-directed the money flow away from product and into your pocket.

Recent developments internationally, which will finally require online platforms to compensate the news industry are encouraging. I hope we can collaborate to move this issue forward in the United States in a fair and productive way. Just this month, April 2020, French antitrust regulators ordered Google to pay news publishers for displaying snippets of articles after years of helping itself to excerpts for its news service. As regulators in France said, "Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile." The Australian government also recently said that Facebook and Google would have to pay media outlets in the country for news content. The country's Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg noted "We can't deny the importance of creating a level playing field, ensuring a fair go for companies and the appropriate compensation for content."

We have, of course, written about both the plans in France as well as those in Australia (not to mention a similar push in Canada that Freeman apparently missed). Of course, what he's missing is... well, nearly everything. First, the idea that it's Google that's causing problems for the news industry is laughable on multiple fronts.

If newspapers feel that Google is causing them harm by linking to them and sending them traffic, then they can easily block Google, which respects robots.txt restrictions. I don't see Freeman's newspaper doing that. Second, in most of the world, Google does not monetize its Google News aggregation service, so the idea that it's someone making money off of "their" news, is not supported by reality. Third, the idea that "the news" is "owned" by the news organizations is not just laughable, but silly. After all, the news orgs are not making the news. If Freeman is going to claim that news orgs should be compensated for "their" news, then, uh, shouldn't his news orgs be paying the actual people who make the news that they're reporting on? Or is he saying that journalism is somehow special?

Finally, and most importantly, he says all of this as if we haven't seen how these efforts play out in practice. When Germany passed a similar law, Google ended up removing snippets only to be told they had to pay anyway. Google, correctly, said that if it had to license snippets, it would offer a price of $0, or it would stop linking to the sites -- and the news orgs agreed. In Spain, where Google was told it couldn't do this, the company shut down Google News and tons of smaller publications were harmed, not helped, but this policy.

This surely sounds familiar to all of us. It's been more than a decade since Rupert Murdoch instinctively observerd: "There are those who think they have a right to take our news content and use it for their own purposes without contributing a penny to its production... Their almost wholesale misappropriation of our stories is not fair use. To be impolite, it's theft."

First off, it's not theft. As we pointed out at the time, Rupert Murdoch, himself, at the very time he was making these claims, owned a whole bunch of news aggregators himself. The problem was never news aggregators. The problem has always been that other companies are successful on the internet and Rupert Murdoch was not. And, again, the whole "misappropriation" thing is nonsense: any news site is free to block Google's scrapers and if it's "misappropriation" to send you traffic, why do all of these news organizations employ "search engine optimizers" who work to get their sites higher in the rankings? And, yet again, are they paying the people who make the actual news? If not, then it seems like they're full of shit.

With Facebook and Google recently showing some contrition by launching token programs that provide a modest amount of funding, it's heartening to see that the tech giants are beginning to understand their moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism.

Spare me the "moral and social responsibility to support and safeguard local journalism," Heath. You're the one who cut 1,000 journalism jobs down to 150. Not Google. You're the one who took profitable newspapers that were investing in local journalism, fired a huge number of their reporters and staff, and redirected the even larger profits into your pockets instead of local journalism.

Even if someone wants to argue this fallacy, it should not be you, Heath.

Facebook created the Facebook Journalism Project in 2017 "to forge stronger ties with the news industry and work with journalists and publishers." If Facebook and the other tech behemoths are serious about wanting to "forge stronger ties with the news industry," that will start with properly remunerating the original producers of content.

Remunerating the "original producers"? So that means that Heath is now agreeing to compensate the people who create the news that his remaining reporters write up? Oh, no? He just means himself -- the middleman -- being remunerated directly into his pocket while he continues to cut jobs from his newsroom while raking in record profits? That seems... less compelling.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Apple News and other online aggregators make billions of dollars annually from original, compelling content that our reporters, photographers and editors create day after day, hour after hour. We all know the numbers, and this one underscores the value of our intellectual property: The New York Times reported that in 2018, Google alone conservatively made $4.7 billion from the work of news publishers. Clearly, content-usage fees are an appropriate and reasonable way to help ensure newspapers exist to provide communities across the country with robust high-quality local journalism.

First of all, the $4.7 billion is likely nonsense, but even if it were accurate, Google is making that money by sending all those news sites a shit ton of traffic. Why aren't they doing anything reasonable to monetize it? And, of course, Digital First Media has bragged about its profitability, and leaked documents suggest its news business brought in close to a billion dollars in 2017 with a 17% operating margin, significantly higher than all other large newspaper chains.

This is nothing more than "Google has money, we want more money, Google needs to give us the money." There is no "clearly" here and "usage fees" are nonsense. If you don't want Google's traffic, put up robots.txt. Google will survive, but your papers might not.

One model to consider is how broadcast television stations, which provide valuable local news, successfully secured sizable retransmission fees for their programming from cable companies, satellite providers and telcos.

There are certain problems with retransmission fees in the first place (given that broadcast television was, by law, freely transmitted over the air in exchange for control over large swaths of spectrum), and the value they got was in having a large audience to advertise too. But, more importantly, retransmission involved taking an entire broadcast channel and piping it through cable and satellite to make things easier for TV watchers who didn't want to switch between an antenna and a cable (or satellite receiver). An aggregator is not -- contrary to what one might think reading Freeman's nonsense -- retransmitting anything. It's linking to your content and sending you traffic on your own site. The only things it shows are a headline and (sometimes) a snippet to attract more traffic.

There are certainly other potential options worth of our consideration -- among them whether to ask Congress about revisiting thoughtful limitations on "Fair Use" of copyrighted material, or seeking judicial review of how our trusted content is misused by others for their profit. By beginning a collective dialogue on these topics we can bring clarity around the best ways to proceed as an industry.

Ah, yes, let's throw fair use -- the very thing that news orgs regularly rely on to not get sued into the ground -- out the window in an effort to get Google to funnel extra money into Heath Freeman's pockets. That sounds smart. Or the other thing. Not smart.

And "a collective dialogue" in this sense appears to be collusion. As in an antitrust violation. Someone should have maybe mentioned that to Freeman.

Our newspaper brands and operations are the engines that power trust local news in communities across the United States.

Note that it's the brands and operations -- not journalists -- that he mentions here. That's a tell.

Fees from those who use and profit from our content can help continually optimize our product as well as ensure our newsrooms have the resources they need.

Again, Digital First Media, is perhaps the most profitable newspaper chain around. And it just keeps laying off reporters.

My hope is that we are able to work together towards the shared goal of protecting and enhancing local journalism.

You first, Heath, you first.

So, basically, Heath Freeman, who has spent decade or so buying up profitable newspapers, laying off a huge percentage of their newsrooms, leaving a shell of a husk in their place, then redirecting the continued profits (often that exist solely because of the legacy brand) into his own pockets rather than in journalism... wants the other newspapers to collude with him to force successful internet companies who send their newspapers a ton of free traffic to pay him money for the privilege of sending them traffic.

Sounds credible.

'Extra time for you to test,' you lucky, lucky developers

Google has applied the brakes to Android 11, pushing things out by a month as it grapples with a world that is much changed since planning for the release began.…

Компания Google выпустила новую версию приложения Google Lens с несколькими полезными изменениями.

Недавно мы писали, что Google, вслед за Apple, собирается выпустить свою собственную дебетовую карту. Сейчас о таких планах объявила компания Samsung.