It's easy to bash aggregators . . .

Recently, Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks and internet billionaire) had some rather scathing words for Google and other news aggregators, which can be read here. Cuban claims aggregators essentially steal the content of publishers because the vast majority of readers stop at the headlines and don't bother clicking through to see full stories. Without that clickthrough, content publishers are unable to generate ad revenue.

Michael Arrington, publisher of Techcrunch, took some time to refute Cuban's assertions in this post. There have been numerous arguments made that aggregation is capturing a larger segment of the online content value chain (which logically makes sense when the signal-to-noise ratio is shrinking as the cost of publishing online approaches $0). However, it seems not many people defend aggregators.

As I noted in my last post, I am in the process of trying to start a network of highly vertical aggregation sites. Every once in a while, I have had some questions in my mind regarding “theft” issue – only from a moral perspective – not legal. Part of that stems from debates I will have with my mother who was an AP editor and journalist for several decades. How can you debate with mom without having some questions?

However, for me, it comes back to survival of the fittest. A good aggregator should surface the best content and reward the writers with traffic. I don’t see any dissonance with the basic tenets of capitalism nor what consumers should expect.

Of course, to what extent should journalism be held to capitalist standards? That’s a tough question, as I believe there are clear externalities involved.

However, it's nice to know that at least someone else agrees with me that aggregators create value and don't just steal it.