'We do not steal content,' Google UK MD tells MPs

Google responded to publishers' complaints by limiting users' free access to news, its UK managing director told MPs this morning.

"Google were trying to listen to what publishers want to do, and develop technologies that help them to do that," said Matt Brittin, giving evidence on regional media to the culture, media and sport committee during this morning's evidence session.

By introducing more flexibility with the first-click-free system and allowing closed content news sites to restrict users accessing more than five articles a day, they were giving publishers 'an additional level of control' he said.

"In the long term, we will see more paid news services being available," he said, praising Johnston Press' experimentation with pay walls.

Where the content is scarce there's a good case for subscription models, he said.

But, he added: "We will continue to see a lot of free and ad content on the web."

Brittin had 'no idea' whether Rupert Murdoch responded positively to the changes to the first-click-free system, he said.

Strongly defending Google against publishers' claims that the search giant was a 'parasite,' Brittin, who was named UK MD earlier this year, claimed Google was a free newsagent, or newsstand, not a news publisher:

"Firstly, we help people find content online. You go to Google or Google News. You go there to find stories, not to read stories, but to find news content."
 
Google delivers 'something like' four billion clicks to news organisations and publishers per month, he said. "Once those clicks go through to sites, those are people reading stories and engaging in advertising."

"It's wrong to paint us as stealing content (…) The amount of traffic that comes from us is equivalent to 100,000 clicks a minute to newspaper sites."

Google's 'snippets' of text were in-line with worldwide copyright law, he claimed.

Secondly, he argued that news advertising was of limited value to Google: 'news is not a category which has a lot of commercial opportunity for us in the current model' he said. 

He argued that no advertising is found on Google News, and adverts are rarely found against stories on Google search. "We don't make money from this content in any great measure," he said.

"Publishers have control and always have had the control to allow them to opt out of Google Search and Google News. They can do it today."

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