bbc Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia

[ENTERPRISE]

Quote

Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia over the nation's attempt to make the tech giant share royalties with news publishers.

Australia is introducing a world-first law to make Google, Facebook and potentially other tech companies pay media outlets for their news content.

Source: Link

 

By that logic I should charge users for reading news curated here ? Lol

[Ashura]

Isn't it the other way around?

 

Media outlets would use google to get more traffic?

[schuck6566]

I think the semi logic is that Google is collecting from their advertisers every time we click on a link,so the media people figure they are providing the substance of the link we are clicking on,so google should be kicking back some of it to them.

[KyadCK]

The complaints about news papers struggling makes no sense to me. Why should I kill a tree and have a non-interactive article it brought to me when I can watch it and get the reactions of others in real time? Of course they are struggling, they are obsolete.

 

Google paying to link to articles means they will pay for the ones most likely to make them money and hedge their bets like any company would. This is common sense. In no way will this help smaller, less read, publications grow, it will just funnel more people to the larger media outlets and open up Google to lawsuits when they, naturally, pick favorites.

 

That last bit with France makes sense; Google was providing content without sending the viewer to the site in question and was thus "claiming" potential revenue from something that was not theirs. I could see that taking effect globally. I can not see Google negotiating with every news outlet on every article and trying to put a dollar value on each one, that's absurd.

Edited January 22, 2021 by KyadCK

[UltraMega]

Format the source @OP

[ENTERPRISE]

22 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

Format the source @OP

Fixed !

[UltraMega]

I don't really understand their argument for why google should pay news sites. Facebook I can understand because it will show a good amount of the content without the user needing to open the link so it sort steals content in that sense, but I don't think that is true for google in the same respect. 

Also why google and not bing? 

I think google is a terrible company that abuses it's market power in highly inappropriate ways and has for a long time. I think they deserve really harsh punishments that are long overdue, but with all that said I still can't think of a reason why they own news sites anything. I literally only use google for maps, I don't see how it's vital to the news at all. 

It sounds like their news companies are struggling and they're just looking for someone to blame. Saying google owes them anything is like saying there should be a fee for giving someone directions that's paid by the person being helpful. Just because google has made a successfully business out of pointing people to the right places and they make ad money from that, doesnt mean they owe any of that to media companies and I can't think of any reasonable logic that would support that idea. 

[schuck6566]

17 hours ago, UltraMega said:

I don't really understand their argument for why google should pay news sites. Facebook I can understand because it will show a good amount of the content without the user needing to open the link so it sort steals content in that sense, but I don't think that is true for google in the same respect. 

Also why google and not bing? 

I think google is a terrible company that abuses it's market power in highly inappropriate ways and has for a long time. I think they deserve really harsh punishments that are long overdue, but with all that said I still can't think of a reason why they own news sites anything. I literally only use google for maps, I don't see how it's vital to the news at all. 

It sounds like their news companies are struggling and they're just looking for someone to blame. Saying google owes them anything is like saying there should be a fee for giving someone directions that's paid by the person being helpful. Just because google has made a successfully business out of pointing people to the right places and they make ad money from that, doesnt mean they owe any of that to media companies and I can't think of any reasonable logic that would support that idea. 

In order, the 2 screenshots show a simple web search for "national guard parking garage" performed on Google and on Bing. BOTH show quite a bit of detail in the results(enough so that you can get the gist of the issue without reading the story). Google had an add on the main search result page,Bing did not. (unless firefox browser blocked them unknowingly to me)ABP was off for the search both times and was performed in their own tabs.

In a way,this is really not that different from the monetized videos on youtube.You click on 1 of them,youtube gets money and the poster gets money.You don't click no one gets the money from the ad. The story providers are looking to have their links become "monetized" on sites that are ad supported since they are helping draw people there. At least that's how I am seeing this.It would take work on BOTH sides to actually work,the search engines,and the content provider would have to have something in THEIR site detecting if a person was coming from a 3rd party link and charge that link appropriately.

[UltraMega]

Yea but youtube actually hosts the videos. Google isn't hosting the news sites.

[schuck6566]

22 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Yea but youtube actually hosts the videos. Google isn't hosting the news sites.

which kinda makes making money off clicking on a link to them without them getting a share seem even more of a raw deal.They aren't paying for the hosting,the media site is.

[UltraMega]

2 hours ago, schuck6566 said:

which kinda makes making money off clicking on a link to them without them getting a share seem even more of a raw deal.They aren't paying for the hosting,the media site is.

I don't see any logic in that argument at all. Google provides a service in the form of web searches. If people use that search feature to find content, I don't see why google doesn't deserve a finder's fee.

 

Logically it would have to be true that news sites would make more money if google didn't exist and that doesn't seem like it would be the case even a little bit u less I'm missing something. 

 

This push seems destined to fail because it makes no sense. 

[Diffident]

3 hours ago, schuck6566 said:

which kinda makes making money off clicking on a link to them without them getting a share seem even more of a raw deal.They aren't paying for the hosting,the media site is.

Google is providing them free advertising by providing the link that most people wouldn't even know existed otherwise.

 

Spain already tried this.  Google shutdown Google News in Spain.  Unless Australia can strong arm Google like France did, by making it illegal for Google to remove the link (don't ask me how that was even possible), Google isn't paying.

[KyadCK]

On 1/23/2021 at 9:49 AM, schuck6566 said:

In order, the 2 screenshots show a simple web search for "national guard parking garage" performed on Google and on Bing. BOTH show quite a bit of detail in the results(enough so that you can get the gist of the issue without reading the story). Google had an add on the main search result page,Bing did not. (unless firefox browser blocked them unknowingly to me)ABP was off for the search both times and was performed in their own tabs.

In a way,this is really not that different from the monetized videos on youtube.You click on 1 of them,youtube gets money and the poster gets money.You don't click no one gets the money from the ad. The story providers are looking to have their links become "monetized" on sites that are ad supported since they are helping draw people there. At least that's how I am seeing this.It would take work on BOTH sides to actually work,the search engines,and the content provider would have to have something in THEIR site detecting if a person was coming from a 3rd party link and charge that link appropriately.

 

You seem to be under a misunderstanding on YouTube ad revenue.

 

When you click on video and an Ad plays, both the content and the ad are provided by Google. Google pays the uploader a portion of the ad money for the opportunity to present the Ad.

 

When you click on a news article, the ads are hosted by and presented by the news site. The news site is making money from the Ads hosted on their web page which people found because of Google. Google does not get a cut unless the link you clicked on was in itself an Ad, or unless they use your data in some other way.

 

Google got them more traffic, and thus, more potential money. Why should Google pay them?

[Andrew]

I actually agree with this law. What's currently happening, is Google is showing bulk of the articles on the Google search. When they do this, the places hosting the information aren't getting paid for it. Searching for "covid 19" is a great example of this.

 

 

None of this is from Google as stated by the sources at the bottom. Google is just displaying info from this websites, without paying them. This is effectively piracy. Realistically, after seeing that, how many do you really think click on the source links?

 

A proper solution to this is to either pay the hosts what they would have got if someone clicked on the link or just remove this information so you have to click on the links in order to see the information.

 

The problem with this law is the amount of money the news outlets in Australia want for this type of data to be shown on Google. They want obscene amounts of money that's way more than they would have got if people clicked went on it.

[Diffident]

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

I actually agree with this law. What's currently happening, is Google is showing bulk of the articles on the Google search. When they do this, the places hosting the information aren't getting paid for it. Searching for "covid 19" is a great example of this.

 

 

None of this is from Google as stated by the sources at the bottom. Google is just displaying info from this websites, without paying them. This is effectively piracy. Realistically, after seeing that, how many do you really think click on the source links?

 

A proper solution to this is to either pay the hosts what they would have got if someone clicked on the link or just remove this information so you have to click on the links in order to see the information.

 

The problem with this law is the amount of money the news outlets in Australia want for this type of data to be shown on Google. They want obscene amounts of money that's way more than they would have got if people clicked went on it.

What they are doing is the equivalent to what Enterprise did when starting this topic.

 

The Covid statistics are unique.  Search for anything else and it's just a title with a link to the original article.

 

[UltraMega]

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

I actually agree with this law. What's currently happening, is Google is showing bulk of the articles on the Google search. When they do this, the places hosting the information aren't getting paid for it. Searching for "covid 19" is a great example of this.

 

 

None of this is from Google as stated by the sources at the bottom. Google is just displaying info from this websites, without paying them. This is effectively piracy. Realistically, after seeing that, how many do you really think click on the source links?

 

A proper solution to this is to either pay the hosts what they would have got if someone clicked on the link or just remove this information so you have to click on the links in order to see the information.

 

The problem with this law is the amount of money the news outlets in Australia want for this type of data to be shown on Google. They want obscene amounts of money that's way more than they would have got if people clicked went on it.

Its not piracy anymore than when you write an essay for an english class and quote part of an article. I understand your point but legally, quoting data from an article is perfectly fine so long as the source is included, at least in America where Google lives. 

 

Now if news sites wanted to copyright their articles, then google would have a problem but if they did that it wouldn't be news anymore. 

 

COVID data is probably one of the better examples of google doing something like this since that data is so important right now but, at least in my experience, google doesn't show much more than the headlines. 
 

Edited January 26, 2021 by UltraMega

[KyadCK]

16 hours ago, Andrew said:

I actually agree with this law. What's currently happening, is Google is showing bulk of the articles on the Google search. When they do this, the places hosting the information aren't getting paid for it. Searching for "covid 19" is a great example of this.

 

 

None of this is from Google as stated by the sources at the bottom. Google is just displaying info from this websites, without paying them. This is effectively piracy. Realistically, after seeing that, how many do you really think click on the source links?

 

A proper solution to this is to either pay the hosts what they would have got if someone clicked on the link or just remove this information so you have to click on the links in order to see the information.

 

The problem with this law is the amount of money the news outlets in Australia want for this type of data to be shown on Google. They want obscene amounts of money that's way more than they would have got if people clicked went on it.

 

That is related to the French case spoken about at the end of the article, which is different from what Australia is trying to push.

 

France said "Yo, you're hosting some of our data and it's costing us views. Pay us for the data you're hosting that came from our sites".

 

Australia is saying "You're making money by people using you to find us. Debate and agree with us about the value of the article, per article, and then give us some of that in order to have the right to link to our article." 

 

You are making the same argument France did. The French are right and the Australians are dumb in this case.

 

This is also dumb;

Quote

If the law is passed, the news code would initially apply only to Facebook and Google, the government says.

 

Laws should apply to all or none, or at least to a given size, in number of clicks or searches or something, not to one or two companies specifically.

[J7SC_Orion]

There are likely bigger overarching trends at play, IMO. But Google as the biggest fish (and by extension other giants in the digital field) knows not only from the French action, but also the attempted Australian move and the October / 2020 lawsuit by the US Department of Justice re. its alleged antitrust behaviour in 'Search' that we're entering the Standard Oil / Sherman act break-up zone. Any nibbling away by individual countries or trade blocks at its near-monopoly power is viewed as part of this trend.

 

Google's 'Search' pages, at least in my country, not only include 'News' options but with it the news intro summaries and excerpts produced and paid for by publishing houses. My background is economics and computing, not law, and I don't know too much about the legal specifics of the Australian case, but Google clearly seems to employ its monopoly powers in 'News' as well. In essence, it has become the kiosk to browse the headlines of various offerings, such as those 'analog world' kiosks found in Paris, NY, London etc. with the newspapers and magazines aligned to show headlines and summary text the publishers arranged and paid for.

 

Finally, Google's threat response itself re. suspension of Search in Australia  if the News segment is touched makes that connection...with Standard Oil it was also about horizontal and vertical integration.