Cuban Tones Down Rhetoric, Calls Google Sucking Vampires
February 04, 2010
(SPORTS TECHNOLOGY)
Glad to see enfant terrible Mark Cuban is still at it. Evidently he's now warning media owners that Google (News - Alert) is “a vampire trying to suck them dry,” according to industry observer Danny Sullivan, “giving them nothing back and daring owners to block it.”
Cuban's been about the only interesting thing in the NBA the past several years. His status as owner of the Dallas Mavericks lets him treat NBA Commissioner David Stern as his own personal piñata. What he says even makes sense sometimes, but it's always good box office.
Not like it takes that much to be a Genuinely Interesting Personality in the world of NBA ownership, what with palookas like Donald Sterling, Chris Cohan, Michael Heisley and the Dolan Dolts they probably invite renowned stiff Al Gore to meetings to liven things up.
Quoting from AdWeek, Sullivan reported Cuban saying in New York City on Tuesday, giving the keynote address at the AlwaysOn OnMedia 2010 conference, “Google is a vampire, and you run scared. There is no reason to be indexed in Google.”
He also said, in Sullivan's words, “readers who find headlines via Google rarely convert to traffic, and publishers have a hard time monetizing that traffic. You haven’t gotten anything back except that you’ve turned into zombies.”
This is standard stuff for Cuban the NBA team owner. David Stern would cut off his left leg to have such tepidity, such dishwater-dull rhetoric from Cuban at owners' meetings.
Mark Cuban is also an investor in content-scraper Mahalo, Sullivan points out, “which touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views. Is Google a vampire except when it works in Cuban’s favor? It’s compare and contrast time.”
No, Danny, it’s Mark Cuban time. There's a difference.
As industry observer Michael Arrington said, “Telling the world that you don’t want them to do you the favor of visiting your site is just ridiculous. Let me repeat that. When someone visits your site they are doing you a favor. Not the other way around.”
Cuban knows this, of course. He's a smart guy. Industry observer Matthew Ingram wrote that to take him seriously, you'd have to assume that Cuban's ignoring “the fact that search – driven traffic is growing at most newspapers – in contrast to direct traffic and print circulation, and that if they don’t find a way to appeal to and monetize those readers then they will be catering to an ever-shrinking number.”
In other words, as an investor in an aggregator instead of a content producer, Cuban's just jostling for position. He's agitating for a piece of the pie he sees flowing past. And he doesn't mind throwing elbows under the backboard.
Cuban's been about the only interesting thing in the NBA the past several years. His status as owner of the Dallas Mavericks lets him treat NBA Commissioner David Stern as his own personal piñata. What he says even makes sense sometimes, but it's always good box office.
Not like it takes that much to be a Genuinely Interesting Personality in the world of NBA ownership, what with palookas like Donald Sterling, Chris Cohan, Michael Heisley and the Dolan Dolts they probably invite renowned stiff Al Gore to meetings to liven things up.
Quoting from AdWeek, Sullivan reported Cuban saying in New York City on Tuesday, giving the keynote address at the AlwaysOn OnMedia 2010 conference, “Google is a vampire, and you run scared. There is no reason to be indexed in Google.”
He also said, in Sullivan's words, “readers who find headlines via Google rarely convert to traffic, and publishers have a hard time monetizing that traffic. You haven’t gotten anything back except that you’ve turned into zombies.”
This is standard stuff for Cuban the NBA team owner. David Stern would cut off his left leg to have such tepidity, such dishwater-dull rhetoric from Cuban at owners' meetings.
Mark Cuban is also an investor in content-scraper Mahalo, Sullivan points out, “which touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views. Is Google a vampire except when it works in Cuban’s favor? It’s compare and contrast time.”
No, Danny, it’s Mark Cuban time. There's a difference.
As industry observer Michael Arrington said, “Telling the world that you don’t want them to do you the favor of visiting your site is just ridiculous. Let me repeat that. When someone visits your site they are doing you a favor. Not the other way around.”
Cuban knows this, of course. He's a smart guy. Industry observer Matthew Ingram wrote that to take him seriously, you'd have to assume that Cuban's ignoring “the fact that search – driven traffic is growing at most newspapers – in contrast to direct traffic and print circulation, and that if they don’t find a way to appeal to and monetize those readers then they will be catering to an ever-shrinking number.”
In other words, as an investor in an aggregator instead of a content producer, Cuban's just jostling for position. He's agitating for a piece of the pie he sees flowing past. And he doesn't mind throwing elbows under the backboard.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Kelly McGuire
