“With dwindling revenue and diminished resources, frustrated newspaper executives are looking for someone to blame,” he [Google CEO Eric Schmidt] wrote in the article published on Thursday.
“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,” he said. “The facts, I believe, suggest otherwise.”
Revenue from ads that appear alongside news articles on Google’s search engine represent a “tiny fraction” of the company’s overall revenue, Schmidt said.
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Individual news articles accessed through Google can often be read for free, even if the newspapers’ actual website charges a subscription fee.
“We also acknowledge that it has been difficult for newspapers to make money from their online content,” Schimdt wrote. “But just as there is no single cause of the industry’s current problems, there is no single solution.”