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Comment by ecopoesis | Hacker News Reader

It's nice that Google would like Microsoft to stop copying them. Everyone else who generates unique content (news site articles, TripAdvisor reviews) would like Google to stop copying their content into Google News and Google Places.

Apparently Google only cares about sites copying other sites content when their it's their own stuff getting copied.

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Any site that wants Google to stop copying their content to Google news can ask Google news to stop doing so. It's very simple.

The real issue is that they don't want their content in Google News, but they also don't want to kill the golden goose that is directing traffic to their site. I.e. Google News is generating traffic for them, but they don't want the content to be on Google News either. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

edit: 'they' here refers to the old media newspapers, more specifically to Mr. Murdoch.

There's a big difference between copying content and linking to content. I don't think anyone has a problem with Google linking to them: that is after all the purpose of a search engine. But Google doesn't just link, they copy full content into their site, giving users no reason to click through to the original creator.

And Google doesn't let creators opt-out of just the content-stealing part of their scheme. If you want to be indexed by Google, you have to allow them to copy whatever they want from your site. And no one can actually opt-out because Google is a monopoly in search. So they get away with it, stealing pageviews from content creators.

Most sites are very happy to have traffic from Google. Those that aren't can simply configure robots.txt.

And Google seems to be happy that their search engine is accessible by IE users.

They could even just block users of the toolbar if they object to its behavior, since it's identified in the user agent.

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