Google considered buying a newspaper but dropped the idea, the head of the Internet search giant said in an interview with the Financial Times (FT) published on Wednesday.
Google chairman and chief executive officer Eric Schmidt said the California company had also considered using its charitable arm, Google.org, to support news businesses seeking non-profit status but was now unlikely to do so.
He told the FT that Google had looked at buying a newspaper but concluded that potential acquisition targets were too expensive or carried excessive liabilities.
The company was “trying to avoid crossing the line” between technology and content, he said.
Instead, Google was working with the Washington Post and other newspapers to improve their online products and with publishers to make their Web sites “work better” for online advertising, Schmidt said.
He told the FT that “clever ideas” about sheltering newspapers in non-profit structures had been suggested to Google.org but “are unlikely to happen without some massive, massive set of corporate bankruptcies.”
US newspapers have been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.
The FT said Schmidt would not comment on reports this month that Google had been approached about buying a 20 percent stake in the New York Times Co, which is owned by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners.
It said Schmidt played down industry calls for Google to increase the amount of revenue it shared with news organizations whose content appears on Google News, saying it would have to take money from “another pocket” to do so.
He also said it was highly unlikely that people would pay for general news on the Web when so much was available for free.
Subscriptions and micro-payments would work for specialized content, he said, but were unlikely to do so for general news such as political reporting.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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