don't want their content to be easily found through its search engine, Google argues, they simply need block Google's crawler from indexing them. What underlies the debate however is a larger issue of how traditional media companies are going to survive the transition from the offline world of scarcity to the online world of abundance. Desperate for new sources of revenue, many of the world's most renowned traditional media companies find themselves on the brink of collapse. Such a scenario not only threatens an entire industry employing thousands w0rldwide, but also the very foundation upon which strong democracies are built. The changing landscape If print publications are under threat from the internet, many ask, why don't traditional media companies simply stop printing newspapers and instead focus on producing online content where the potential audience, no longer restricted by a limited distribution model, is much larger? The problem with such an argument is that margins for online advertising have never matched the margins of offline print and the increase in traffic volume doesn't necessarily make up for the immediate decrease in revenues. What's more, the margins that large brand publishers can command online are increasingly under threat for the following three reasons: First, more and more non-traditional media outlets are gaining a larger share of the audience thus creating more competition for advertiser spend. What money is being spent online then is being spread out further and further. Second, the valuable proprietary audience data online publishers can offer advertisers is becoming