Julien Billot, Director of new digital business, Lagadère Active (biggest French newspaper and magazine group), was more threatening: "in a time of crisis, your business model has become predatory. The pricing model (of online advertising) is currently threatening the entire industry." Lagardère, added Billot, "is on the verge" of sending the case to the EU Commission for "predatory practices".

       But Josh Cohen and Mats Carduner (head of Google France and Southern Europe) did not come empty handed to Paris. Far from it. 
       First by clearly stating that Google intends "to be part of the solution" and reiterating the position taken recently by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, who had evoked last summer "the huge moral imperative" to help newspapers. "Search engines should be on the same side of the table", said Cohen.  "Google can't solve declining circulation (…) Nobody, not even Google, can reverse this trend. There should be significant change in your business model".


      To do so, Cohen, admitted "he has no silver bullet", and did not come with a "three things to do list" but, as "the Internet is not a zero sum game", with "a tremendous list of opportunities, if we work together":

 

   In other words, action should be centered on the following three areas:

  • Get more traffic via better distribution of content
  • Engage audience better and keep them for longer
  • Increase the rates they charge via new tools

    "We send hundreds of millions visits every month. We are close to a billion!" said Cohen. "You need your content to be found."

     But French publishers, who acknowledged that Google is not the cause of all their problems, did not want to go into this sort of detail.

     "Not enough" they replied. "You are taking most of the online advertising growth, you are taking all of the advantages". "Present deals are so far from what we need". "The main issue is revenue sharing. Today, it is not fair". "And now with the crisis, people are dying. We do not have enough money to live online". 

      "We see you now as a danger for the life of our companies ", said Conte. "The CPM has collapsed, and the growth of the Internet has been hijacked by search. We are no longer able to pay professional journalists to do their work. "

       "The news ecosystem is dying," said Bruno Patino, who moderated the meeting.  "And we have heard today you are on your own! - despite recent statements by Eric Schmidt. This means you accept the end of news as we know it. But you have a social responsibility for news organizations. You must take it seriously ", said the former CEO at Le Monde InterActif and now managing director of Radio France Culture. 

      "Yes, we are taking it seriously. We have expertise to help you", answered Cohen. Google, said Cohen, continues to believe that "quality journalism is paramount but business models might not be the same". "We don't want to stop the fragmentation of content, the UGC and citizen journalism trends, the free vs. paid debate, or more simply the flow of information to Internet users", warned Carduner.     

     Cohen said he regretted not being able to play a more active role in the on-going so called "Etats Généraux de la Presse". "We missed an opportunity. Let us now work together on tactics. "   Cohen dismissed again the new ACAP protocol intended to crawl, recommended by many publishers to have better control of their content on the Web.

       But publishers have also denounced Google's lack of transparency (it's "like a black box") and what they called the absence of follow-up in the past after Google made declarations of good intentions. Yet again, Google refused to give an idea of its French revenue, while, in a previous meeting, French publishers estimated it was between 800 million and one billion euros. 

      On Friday morning, we had another meeting with Cohen and the French online news association (called Le GESTE). The tone there was much less acrimonious. Cohen went into detail on how to monetize archives, distribute local news, video and images, integrate content from YouTube partners, the use of Google quotes, Google site maps, meta-tags… Questions about SEO, Google API's openness and link maximization were also raised. Cohen made a pledge to visit Europe more often, and said that he would encourage regular meetings between Google executives and online news publishers.

      On his personal blog, Emmanuel Parody, publisher of CBS Interactive in France, (ZDNet.fr, CNETFrance.fr, Businessmobile.fr, News.fr) and one of our best experts on online monetization in Paris, expressed some radical views. Arguing that Google is partly responsible for the collapse of online advertising revenue, he forecast that sooner or later the issue of dismantling Google would be raised because of its"outrageously dominant position", both in search and as the main advertising clearing house. This makes Google act like an unacceptable taxation system on online added value and economic transactions.

« Clearly, because Google is now controlling trading routes, it's in a position of fixing prices. This is the problem ».

      A French trade union representative has recently come out in favor of banning Google from France…

      I am certain that Eric Schmidt will get a thorough de-briefing on Cohen's Paris trip. As Jay Rosen commented in a recent tweet, "Google people tell me: we know we have to support the news ecosystem. But they don't want to prop up messed up organizations."

(full disclosure: I am a member of this commission in charge of studying how the Internet can help the newspaper industry and had an active role in arranging this meeting with Google. AFP has a licensing agreement with Google).