Google is probably the most appreciated and criticised company for the work it does to organise the worlds content. Publishers work hard to collect content, Google scrapes it and sends a lot of traffic to publishers via its search index. However as Google gets smarter in its quest to go from information to wisdom, they can now intelligent answer questions by users right within the knowledge box that appears over search results. A lot of original research and hard work by publications go waste and endangers their sustainability.
An interesting fact just came to light, Google actually PAID for local content when they launched Local in India. Not upfront, not readily, but after realising that there is no option and just charming a young startup won’t get them the data for free. Anand Jain, Co-founder of Burrp (& Clevertap) shared this story on a twitter thread. The amount involved is not huge, but it is till interesting to note that Google actually paid for content. Crazy.
Here is the thread in its entirety. Some tweets from the thread embedded below.
In the next few tweets, I'm going to tell a tale of how burrp! got Google to pay for content.
— Anand Jain (@helloanand) July 20, 2017
When @deapubhi and I launched burrp! in 2006 we realized there was no good source for local listings data.
— Anand Jain (@helloanand) July 20, 2017
Fast forward to 2007 Google wanted to launched Local in India but didn't have any good quality data. Hard to believe, but true.
— Anand Jain (@helloanand) July 20, 2017
So we asked them to pay us for content. They baulked. They said G never paid anyone for content. We asked them to screw off.
— Anand Jain (@helloanand) July 20, 2017
Then after a few tough phone calls with Mountain View, we settled on a price of $15K for the data. The deal got finalized.
— Anand Jain (@helloanand) July 20, 2017
For one year, all google "local" search results were powered by burrp data – results 1 through 10.
— Anand Jain (@helloanand) July 20, 2017
I am still trying to digest what I have just read. Google paid for listing someone else’s content on its search engine. Totally crazy!
