Good afternoon, and thank you very much for inviting me to speak here in India. When I told a couple of friends in the news industry that I was coming to WAN one said: don’t forget your flak jacket. The other said: take a crash helmet.

The title of this session is: What do we do about Google? My first suggestion is: don’t shoot, I come in peace.

What do we do about Google? I’m not sure it’s quite the right question, because it suggests Google is the cause of the problems the newspaper industry faces. Let’s put it another way: if Google didn’t exist, would the industry be any better off than it is today? Don’t answer that just yet! I want to argue that far from being the cause of your problems Google is a willing partner in helping to find the solutions, hard as that task undoubtedly is.

Imagine we’re in 2015, and this [PHONE/READER] is a piece of technology which delivers me my news. I can flip through my favorite papers and magazines without a frustrating wait for each new page to load. Even better, it knows who I am, what I like and what I’ve already read. So the stories that appear are tailored to my interests and needs.

I read a technology report from the Times of India. There’s an interesting piece about Dubai in Egypt’s Al-Ahram, translated automatically from Arabic to English. A story pops up about great restaurants in Hyderabad. I tap my finger on the screen, to tell the computer it got that bit right!

Some of these stories will be part of my monthly news subscription package. Some - where the free preview draws me in - will cost a few pennies billed to my account. Others will be free, paid for by advertisements. But these ads are not pitches for products I’d never use. They will be chosen just for me. Someone over here reading the same story at the same time will see a different ad, tailored for her. Advertisers will pay a lot of money for that.

It’s a long way from the online news experience of today. Here’s the current technology. In comparison to reading the news online it’s a model of simplicity and speed. I can flip through pages far faster than I can on the web and when I’ve finished one article, it’s obvious what to do next -- turn the page!

For me the most frustrating thing about today’s online news is that I tell it what I’m looking for, and yet it doesn’t learn. So every time I return to a news site, it doesn’t remember who I am, what I like, what I’ve already read. Instead it shows me the same article about Barack Obama I already read rather than a new feature about Rupert Murdoch that might be really useful! It could have shown me an ad for the restaurant at the Hyderabad Novotel. Instead I get an ad for a diet.

This week has of course been dominated by the issue how newspapers adapt to the new, disruptive world. It’s not a new story - technology has been disrupting the news industry for many years. It was the arrival of radio and television that started the decline of newspaper circulation. Afternoon newspapers were the first casualties. And then the advent of 24-hour news turned what was in the morning papers into - literally - old news.

Now the Internet has broken down the entire news package, with articles read individually, reached from a search engine, a blog or Facebook, and abandoned if there’s no good reason to hang around once the story is finished. It’s what we call the atomic unit of consumption.

And the pressures on ad revenue caused by the Internet, and made worse by the recession, are causing even greater damage. The choice facing advertisers targeting consumers in San Francisco was once between an ad in the Chronicle or Examiner. Then came Craigslist, with free classified ads, then Ebay. Specialist websites followed, taking readers away from some of the most lucrative sections of the newspapers such as travel, finance, cars -- sections which had allowed publishers to fund the costly business of news gathering. And now search engines like Google connect advertisers directly with consumers looking for what they sell, something newspaper ads can’t do.

So, what do we do about newspapers?

With falling revenue and diminished resources it’s not a surprise that many newspapers executives are frustrated. Some are angry with Google, who they see as getting all the benefits from the relationship without providing much in return. I don’t think the facts support that view.

First, Google offers a source of promotion undreamt of just a few years ago. We send online news publishers of all types a billion clicks a month from Google News and more than 3 billion additional visits from Search and other Google services. That’s about 100,000 business opportunities - to serve ads or offer subscriptions - every minute. And we don’t charge anything for that!

Second - in terms of copyright - we typically show only a headline and a line or two from each story, so readers can decide if they’re interested in finding out more - much as they can at the newsstand.

And finally, the suggestion that we’re making big profits on the back of newspapers misrepresents the reality. Millions of people use Google because they’re searching for information. The fact that they’re actively looking for something specific is, of course, very valuable to advertisers. So when someone searches for, say, [Hyderabad restaurants], it indicates the consumer is in the mood to buy, so advertisers are willing to pay to have their ads appear alongside those search results. But think about a typical news query. Search terms like [Afghanistan surge] aren’t as appealing to advertisers as ones for products and services. So the truth is that the revenue we generate from the ads shown alongside News queries is only a tiny fraction of our overall search revenues.

One of the big debates this week has been: should we start charging for access to our content, or should we keep our content in Google? Our message is that those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Whether you’re offering your content for free or selling it, traffic is important. We offer a variety of ways, like First Click Free, for publishers to keep their paid content discoverable in Google. This week we’ve announced an adjustment to that service, so that publishers can limit users to no more than five stories per day without registering or subscribing. And we’re actively exploring technology solutions that might help publishers with some of the logistical problems in charging for content, such as billing systems for subscriptions or micropayments. But at the end of the day, it’s the publishers who decide. If they don’t want us to index their content, they can use simple technical tools to let us know.

The Robots Exclusion Protocol, which is honored by all good search engines, gives the publisher tremendous control over how content is shown. Don’t index this section of my site, display my headlines but not story snippets, remove this article from the index after a certain date, and so on. Today I can announce that we’re giving publishers even more control by launching a separate crawler for Google News. That means that if you choose you can give Google one set of instructions for how we should treat your content in Google News and a different set of instructions for Google Search.

We’re convinced that journalism is a valuable, vital ingredient of democracy. We acknowledge that so far it has been difficult for newspapers to monetise their online content. But just as there is no single cause of the industry’s current problems, there is no single, or easy, solution.

The solution will mean new technological ways to reach audiences, both wide and narrow, to keep them engaged longer and to generate more money. It will mean new models that combine free and paid access to content. It will mean better display advertising that makes more money for publishers. And it should mean a change in tone - and I think this week we can detect one. Talk of tapeworms and kleptomania is not only wide of the mark - it won’t solve the fundamental problems.

We’re eager to play our part in solving those problems. We’re working with more than three dozen partners, testing a service called Google Fast Flip, which is designed to blend the beauty and user experience of print with the benefits of the web. The theory is that if you can make it easier and faster to read articles on the web, people will read more of them - and the first indications are encouraging. Our news partners like the New York Times and the Washington Post receive the majority of the revenue generated by the contextual display ads. Since Fast Flip launched in September, we’ve had a great deal of interest from publishers, and we look forward to announcing new international partners shortly.

That’s a start. But it’s also possible to see how together we can go much further toward that fantasy news gadget I outlined at the start. The astonishing advances in mobile phone sophistication and ownership offer huge potential. As more of these phones become connected to the Internet, they are transformed into mobile reading devices, providing unprecedented opportunities to deliver stories, lifestyle features and ads. And because these phones know where you are, they will be able to provide information which is geographically relevant to your location.

So - what do YOU do about Google? Work with us. To build bigger audiences and engage more deeply with your high value readers. To encourage them to spend more time with your content. And spend more money interacting with more effective, valuable ads.

I am confident that news - through innovation, technology and partnership - can endure with newfound profitability and vitality. There won’t be one answer - there will be many answers. It won’t be all free or all paid-for, but a combination of both. And I hope it will be WITH rather than without or against Google - but that choice is yours!

Thank you.