Google与报纸行业的关系

想象现在是2015年。我手中的小巧设备用一篇篇新闻故事把世界带给我。我翻阅着自己喜欢的报纸杂志，其影像如同印刷的效果一样清晰，无需抓狂地等待每个页面下载。
It's the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp as in print, without a maddening wait for each page to load.
　　
更妙的是，这个设备了解我是什么样的人、喜欢什么内容、以及已经看过了哪些内容。因此当我获得所有的新闻和评论时，也能看到专门针对我的兴趣定制的内容。我扫了一眼《华尔街日报》上的一篇有关健康方面的文章，又看了埃及报纸Al Gomhuria上已经自动从阿拉伯语翻译成英文的伊拉克报道。我在屏幕上轻点手指，告诉电脑这个建议不错。
Even better, the device knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read. So while I get all the news and comment, I also see stories tailored for my interests. I zip through a health story in The Wall Street Journal and a piece about Iraq from Egypt's Al Gomhuria, translated automatically from Arabic to English. I tap my finger on the screen, telling the computer brains underneath it got this suggestion right.
　　
这些文章中的一部分是按月打包订阅的。有些则是通过免费预览吸引了我，让我愿意掏一点钱浏览。还有的不收取费用，由广告付费。但广告内容也不是我从来不会去用的那些产品的静态图片，而是像我所看的新闻的一样，是专门为我定制的。广告商愿意为这种更具针对性的形式付更多广告费。
Some of these stories are part of a monthly subscription package. Some, where the free preview sucks me in, cost a few pennies billed to my account. Others are available at no charge, paid for by advertising. But these ads are not static pitches for products I'd never use. Like the news I am reading, the ads are tailored just for me. Advertisers are willing to shell out a lot of money for this targeting.
　　
上述情形与我们的现状还有很大的距离。现有的技术（譬如你们正在阅读这家著名的报纸）或许相对陈旧，但比起如今在网上看新闻的体验，纸媒却是一种简单快速的模式。我浏览纸质《华尔街日报》的速度比在网上浏览的速度快得多。而且每次回头访问一个网站时，我总是被当成新用户。
This is a long way from where we are today. The current technology -- in this case the distinguished newspaper you are now reading -- may be relatively old, but it is a model of simplicity and speed compared with the online news experience today. I can flip through pages much faster in the physical edition of the Journal than I can on the Web. And every time I return to a site, I am treated as a stranger.
　　
因此当我思考纸媒当前面临的危机时，我首先想到的就是这一点──传统技术在艰难地适应混乱的新世界。这其实是个老故事：正是广播和电视的兴起令报纸的发行开始走下坡路。午报是最早的牺牲品。随后24小时新闻播报的出现令早报上的内容也基本成了旧闻。
So when I think about the current crisis in the print industry, this is where I begin -- a traditional technology struggling to adapt to a new, disruptive world. It is a familiar story: It was the arrival of radio and television that started the decline of newspaper circulation. Afternoon newspapers were the first casualties. Then the advent of 24-hour news transformed what was in the morning papers literally into old news.
　　
如今，互联网彻底打破了整个新闻组合的模式，人们阅读从博客或搜索引擎上看到单篇文章，一旦看完了手头的这篇，又没有很好的理由继续浏览，他们就会弃整个网站而去。这就是我们内部所称的原子单位式的消费。
Now the Internet has broken down the entire news package with articles read individually, reached from a blog or search engine, and abandoned if there is no good reason to hang around once the story is finished. It's what we have come to call internally the atomic unit of consumption.
　　
这种情况对报纸杂志来说无疑十分痛苦，然而它们在互联网广告收入方面面临的压力正带来更大的损失。以前想针对旧金山消费者的广告商面临的选择只不过是在《旧金山纪事报》还是在《旧金山考察报》上登广告的问题。随后分类广告网站Craigslist横空出世，令人们可以免费获得地方分类广告，接下来又出现了Ebay和一些专门性网站。如今，谷歌等搜索引擎直接将广告商与搜寻广告商所售商品的消费者联系起来。
Painful as this is to newspapers and magazines, the pressures on their ad revenue from the Internet is causing even greater damage. The choice facing advertisers targeting consumers in San Francisco was once between an ad in the Chronicle or Examiner. Then came Craigslist, making it possible to get local classifieds for free, followed by Ebay and specialist Web sites. Now search engines like Google connect advertisers directly with consumers looking for what they sell.

面对不断缩水的收入和资源，屡屡受挫的报业管理人士正在找替罪羊。现在他们的怒火大多指向了谷歌，许多管理人士认为谷歌因业务关系而拿到了所有的好处，却没有作出什么回报。我认为事实与此相反。
With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame. Much of their anger is currently directed at Google, whom many executives view as getting all the benefit from the business relationship without giving much in return. The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.
　　
谷歌是一个绝佳的推广渠道。我们每个月通过谷歌资讯给网络新闻出版商带来10亿次点击量，并通过网络搜索和iGoogle等其他服务带来超过30亿次额外的访问量。这相当于每分钟免费获得10万个获得忠诚读者并带来收入的机会。就另一个争论焦点──版权问题而言，我们只显示了新闻标题以及每篇文章的数行内容。如果读者希望继续阅读，他们就必须点击进入报纸网站。（我们与通讯社达成授权协议提供的报导内容除外）如果出版商愿意，他们可以从我们的搜索引擎或是谷歌资讯上撤下自己的内容。
Google is a great source of promotion. We send online news publishers a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than three billion extra visits from our other services, such as Web Search and iGoogle. That is 100,000 opportunities a minute to win loyal readers and generate revenue -- for free. In terms of copyright, another bone of contention, we only show a headline and a couple of lines from each story. If readers want to read on they have to click through to the newspaper's Web site. (The exception are stories we host through a licensing agreement with news services.) And if they wish, publishers can remove their content from our search index, or from Google News.
　　
关于我们通过报纸获取大笔利润的说法也不是事实。我们在搜索领域的收入主要来自于产品广告。比如说，用户输入“数码相机”进行搜索，然后搜索页面出现相关产品的广告。而一则典型的新闻搜索──例如阿富汗──搜索结果的广告寥寥无几。显示在新闻搜索页面旁边的广告，其带来的收入只占我们搜索收入的很小一部分。
The claim that we're making big profits on the back of newspapers also misrepresents the reality. In search, we make our money primarily from advertisements for products. Someone types in digital camera and gets ads for digital cameras. A typical news search -- for Afghanistan, say -- may generate few if any ads. The revenue generated from the ads shown alongside news search queries is a tiny fraction of our search revenue