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Google vs AFP lawsuit may end search engines and blogging as we know it

Political Gateway (Mar 24) – All internet eyes will be on the court case of AFP and Google. The outcome could spell doom for search engines and blogs as we know them and end news syndication online. Possibly enabling a select few to control all our online news.

AFP’s lawsuit states Google is taking headlines and summaries of news articles from AFP clients websites. Something AFP clients could not be more happy about. AFP says this is copyright infringement.

This same type of headline news ‘grabbing’ is done by a large number of companies around the globe. If you ever read the Drudge report you may realize it will affect even him, for he ‘changes’ the headline which is a copyright violation.

AFP wants Google to pay them upwards of 17 million in damages and start only using the headlines and a ‘disclaimer’ with an AFP copyright. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is the truth.

Google in response has dropped many AFP news sites already and may eventually drop them all. The financial damage to the clients of AFP is unknown but may be severe as Google is the number one search engine in the world. How does this affect bloggers and search engines?

A common search result includes the title of the page and a group of text showcasing the searched for term. As the title of a news item page is usually the headline, and the text surrounding the searched for term is usually part of the story, you can see how this would mean the search engines cannot cache or use in their results any AFP news items.

Bloggers traditionally quote articles and link to them in much the same way Google’s News site does. This means they can no longer do that with AFP news items without threat of a lawsuit.

Once AFP wins, other news organizations will follow until search engines will no longer have any relevant data relating to current events, except blogs who can no longer link or quote the articles relating to current events.

When the bloggers are shut out of the news stream (and maybe that is what this is about) and independent news sites are blacklisted from search engines, where will people go to get news? Only the big players. And they will completely control the news we see, read, and hear.

This site, Political Gateway, is one of those independent news sites. We are scared.

And since we host AFP content, our news is no longer syndicated, so if you read this it will be on some other blog or news site as ours cannot be found with a search on a news aggregator anymore.

Permission is granted to quote, copy, modify, or otherwise disseminate this article online or in print by anyone without written consent. Except ABC, CBS, NBC, AFP, AP, Reuters, UPI, and any other news organization that is a known content provider. Those mentioned above must ask for permission. Turnabout is fair play after all.

http://www.politicalgateway.com/

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Nielsen Technical Services to Provide Personal and Private Responses to User's Questions

June 25th, 2005 - Minneapolis, Minnesota - Chris Nielsen, Owner of Nielsen Technical Services today announced that the company would continue to provide support and answer questions asked by those "in the dark" at no cost, as long as the time required does not get excessive. To avoid embarissment and provide personal service, questions asked generally will not be published and the identity of the person asking will not be made public.

"Sure, we could publish the questions and answers on our site since it would be keyword-rich and make it easier to create content, but why use our potential clients in such a manner? They deserve our complete attention and we should not be distracted by thinking about how to use their questions and our answers as marketing material.", said Nielsen, when asked if his company had plans to treat users like cattle.

"No, for over 5 years we have been answering any and all questions that we receive to the best of our ability and never chanrged unless the time required to answer was more than one should resonably expect, or research was needed. People need to know we will not nickel and dime then to death, and the valuable information we have gained over the years should not be kept "secret". We have found that we gain more by giving our information away then we would ever gain by trying to keep it to ourselves. This is the reason behind our publishing our search engine submission list at www.best-free-search-engine-list.com."

"I have, on several occasions, taken to tutoring a young person on what is required for search engine optimization or SEO via email. I would provide detailed instruction and they would do all the work. This provides them with a valuable skill, and costs very little of my time in general. We are now planning a training program that while it may not be free, will be very inexpensive and contain all of the methods and techniques that we have used and refined for the past 5 years."

About Nielsen Technical Services
Nielsen Technical Services provides Internet consulting and specializes in "General" search engine optimization or SEO. General SEO does not use ranking or positioning, but rather focuses on the actual traffic increases that can be seen in a site's web traffic reports. The company also provides site maintenance and help with site usability and functionality. Press release creation and optimization services are also provided, which is why you found this one so easily.

Contact
Chris Nielsen
7141 Oak Pointe Curve
Minneapolis, MN 55438 USA
952-943-0170
prresponse@nielsentech.com