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Comment by unexpected | Hacker News Reader

I agree, but isn't this what Google does to other distribution channels?

I mean, newspapers are upset with Google because Google News takes their distribution channel, wraps their logo and ads, and makes revenue off of it.

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Newspapers don't have (large) online distribution channels, but google does. Newspapers have content and google has the online distribution channel that gets millions more people to view that content.

By the same argument, totlol was helping more people view youtube.

Google doesn't frame content with it's own label, you don't go to Google New York Times edition, you go to New York Times.com

That's true, but I tend to see it as, "google is re-packaging the content for a different audience". In my news example, Google News is targeting the people who don't have time to delve into their local newspapers and just want a quick overview of the news. In a a sense, that's what Totlol is doing- just re-packaging the news for a different audience. The fact that Totlol is 1000x smaller than Google makes what Google is doing more nefarious. Why rip off the little guy?

Additionally, just because google has a large online distribution channel doesn't give it the right to steal. There's something to be said about information proliferating to a mass audience, but in many cases, what Google News does is basically stealing!

To me the solution is so obvious - Google should allow Youtube API users to have some sort of custom adsense, that both google and Totlol can share, for example, that I don't understand why they don't implement it.

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