Google UK head rebuffs criticism from WSJ editor

by Staff, Brand Republic 17-Feb-09, 12:00

LONDON - The head of Google UK, Matt Brittin, has defended his company against criticism from the editor of The Wall Street Journal that it devalues the content produced by media owners.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph today, Brittin claims: "All we are trying to do is help traditional media in a new environment."

Google was last week on the receiving end of criticism from Robert Thomson, the current editor of the Journal and former editor of The Times.

During a panel discussion on the future of newspapers Thomson said: "Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great for Google, but it's terrible for content providers, because it divides that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively.

"And if you are going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make qualitative decisions about that content ... Google doesn't do that."

Thomson was making the point that Google's system of sharing ad revenue with publishers pays a fixed rate for everyone, regardless of the quality of the content.

According to the Telegraph interview, Brittin believes that Thomson's analysis is too simplistic and ignores what Google is doing to help publishers.

He said: "It is easy for people in traditional media to look at the internet and say, 'Oh God, the internet is taking away our readers and advertisers'.

"But -- and I want to be really clear about this -- it is not Google that is taking advertisers away. It is consumer changing their behaviour. And that presents challenges for all of us.

"Many publishers are partners of Google and we work together by providing targeting advertising to their websites so they can make money out of dead space.

"In the last three months of last year we gave away $1.4bn (£970m) of revenue to publishing partners [the figure is for Google's global operations] for adverts on their sites."