We applied to Google's €150m journalism fund – here's what we sent in We here at El Reg were very excited on Friday morning to note the launch of a new €150m ($165m) journalism fund called the Digital News Initiative, funded by everyone's favorite news service, Google. The initiative's goal is to "support high-quality journalism through technology and innovation" and you are able to apply online …
In 2011, the slumbering Fourth Estate awakens to make its first and final stand. The New York Times sues Googlezon, "claiming the fact-stripping robots are a violation of copyright law", but the Supreme Court rules in favor of Googlezon.
>Stories exposing alleged wrongdoing at Google are unlikely to draw huge online audiences.
>Advertisements placed on the same page as the stories would bring in significant income
If they are unlikely to draw huge audiences where does the income come from. Jeez - you're asking for a 6 digit handout and you can't be bothered to proof read. Welcome to modern journalism.
Superb! Don't forget to check claims of false advertising ('we do no evil'), their practice of spreading malware (Android) which makes life significantly easier for criminals using their advertising services to swipe personal details and empty bank accounts, so they're accessory to criminal acts. Then there's invasion of privacy and aiding stalkers. And you've years of experience, the right technical skills, and a large bunch of readers willing to help (sorting the crowdsourcing end of things). How can those lovely altruists at Google NOT think you'd be the perfect people to embark upon such a crusade against Google's evil empire?
I soooooo hope Google gives El Reg the dosh for this. It'd brighten my entire year, never mind day! One can but hope...
Right- off to DuckDuck Go for a spot of web-surfing...
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"I hope the irony of complaining about google pushing its agenda to the detriment of all else isn't lost on Page and Orlowski. Their anti-science agenda devalues all else they do here."
IIRC Lewis Page is Editor-in-Chief these days so he has final say on all the stories, including the ones giving opposing views to the stories under his own by-line. Maybe he just like trolling certain portions of the readership? :-)
A healthy organisation is always ready to welcome, and solicit, well-grounded criticism.
An evil organisation knows how to play the game by throwing a bone to their detractors.
If you do get funded, and there is a not insignificant chance, you have walked into a trap.
Exactly my thoughts.
It's a good thing Google management doesn't have a detectable sense of humour. If I was running that show I would take El Reg up on this and use your reputation for my own as evidence of openness, whilst still feeding you BS.
After all, El Reg and Situation Publishing still use Gmail and your websites use Google Analytics and DoubleClick tracking so keeping tabs on you would be easy.
Unfortunately, I'm not dishonest enough (which is probably why I'm not CEO material).
That aside, congratulations. This is funny, although I am wondering if things have gotten bad so that you actually need that sort of money..
We could use Patreon (hopefully its tidied its security) to give funding for special journalistic projects.
*a dummy news organization front to get them into Apple events (optimistic if they did it twice)
*two [opposing] camps writing about the self-same subject (no cribbing each others work before simultaneous publishing)
*article on subject chosen by poll of readers
You get the idea
Throw in occasional raffle for patrons ("wow, I won a mug"). What's not to like.
Guys, you may wish to start with https://recaptcha.sucks and Google's AdWords monopoly abuse in an attempt to silence the critics of their search engine monopoly abuse.
While since then they 'unblocked' the AdWords account used itself, and all the ads, they left the website itself 'blocked' on the false pretense that it is 'often unavailable' -- so the ads cannot run.
And according to 'Pingdom' we have more than 99.99% of up-time.
We believe it is an act of one of their internal 'informal social networks'.
And according to our server logs and GA records it is executed by some dude employed in one of Google's Telangana state campuses in India.
Google is a very big place with diverse opinions. While many of them are insufferable Kool-Aid guzzlers and those who haven't been anywhere else to know any better, some of them are there with full awareness of their strange and creepy environment. They joined to perform extraordinary research, their former employer was acquired, or it's just a paying job. Those people know why each project exists and why the public can use them for free, and they would approve this before they even finished reading it.
It is encouraging to imagine that stalwart El Regers fully enough realise the Great Phishing and Phorming Game which Google is playing.
Seed and feed the Virtual Machine news and tit-qubits it ignores and declines to finance reveals its zeroday vulnerability exploit flash crash pressure points.
And that beats tilting at windmills, El Reg, with an eloquent raging at the machine.
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