SAN DIEGO - Google Inc.'s chief executive told newspaper publishers Tuesday that they should continue to rely on advertising but seek new ways to reach readers.
Without providing specific recipes, Eric Schmidt laid out a few possibilities, including a site for medicine similar to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which lets users collectively contribute and edit entries. He urged publishers to focus on mobile technology and the development of new platforms for delivering news.
Schmidt said there's still room for subscription and pay-by-the-piece journalism but he emphasized advertising, the source of 98 per cent of Google's revenue, thanks to its success matching ads with a user's search terms and other keywords.
"The important thing here is that advertising that is useful is going to work," he said.
Schmidt commended newspapers for staking claim on the Internet in the 1990s but said there wasn't a second act. He says news websites take too long to read, even slower than flipping through a newspaper or magazine, a shortcoming that can be addressed by improving technology.
"At Google we're working hard to address the technological questions," he said at the Newspaper Association of America's annual convention. "We don't have any answers here."
He said technology for reading news on devices like mobile phone must ultimately be as pleasant as reading a magazine.
"From my perspective, the online experience can be thought of as terrible compared to what I view as this wonderful experience with magazines and newspapers."
Schmidt's wide-ranging remarks for about 45 minutes came before an audience whose businesses have plummeted as the recession compounds a decline in print advertising that began with the shift of some advertising to free or low-cost alternatives online.
Schmidt told reporters he was deeply concerned about the decline in quality journalism but had no easy answers for the industry's woes.
His appearance came one day after The Associated Press announced a news industry initiative to track down copyright violators on the Internet and try to divert traffic from Web sites that don't properly license news content. The AP didn't name any potential targets, but some news reports focused on Internet search engines like Google.
Schmidt said Google has a multimillion-dollar licensing deal for AP content.
"I was a little confused by all the excitement in the news in the last 24 hours," he said.
