Count Googla
WSJ publisher calls Google ‘digital vampire’
The gloves are coming off in the intensifying battle between newspaper publishers and Google.
In a keynote speech at the annual PricewaterhouseCoopers Entertainment and Media Outlook event Tuesday, Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton raised the rhetoric a notch, calling the Internet search giant a vampire “sucking the blood†out of the newspaper business, and promised that new developments would level the playing field.
“There is a charitable view of the history of Google,†said Mr. Hinton, who is also publisher of The Wall Street Journal. “[It] didn’t actually begin life in a cave as a digital vampire per se. The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google’s taste for this kind of blood.â€Â
