Google CEO: “Newspapers must work with aggregators”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes that the newspaper industry should be working with search engines to give consumers tailored news.

Speaking at the Newspaper Association of America’s convention in San Diego, Schmidt said that newspapers were wrong to claim that internet aggregators were misappropriating news organisations’ material.

He added that “the only solution” Google could see to the problems faced by the newspaper industry was working with search engines and online aggregators.

“I would encourage everybody: think in terms of what your reader wants. These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more,” he said.

Schmidt also argued that newspapers had been slow to rise to the digital challenge.

“It’s obvious to me that the majority of the circulation of a newspaper should be online, rather than printed. There should be five times, 10 times more circulation because there’s no distribution cost,” he said.