Should Google and any other search engine for that matter have the right to grab any content off the web and include it in their search results? My opinion is that if it’s published on the web, then yes. I’m not sure what the problem is. Erik Schonfeld seems to agree on the Business 2.0 site.
If the ruling is upheld, it will be the Belgian newspapers who are the big losers. Not showing up on Google or other search engines makes you pretty much invisible on the Web (at least to new readers who wouldn’t seek your site out by themselves). Google may be profiting from search ads next to results with links to these newspapers’ stories. But the Belgian newspaper sites no doubt also receive a lot of traffic from Google which they would otherwise not get. And when all those visitors click through to the full stories, the Belgian sites can show them their own ads.
It makes you wonder if these people really understand how the dynamics of the web works in the real world doesn’t it?
