Tech giants such as Google and Facebook will be required to pay newspapers and other media outlets for using their stories, under new laws being drawn up by the UK Government reports the Daily Mail.
When similar measures were proposed in Australia about one year ago, Google threatened to pull out and then eventually reached a settlement with major media sites there. At the time, I was interviewed by ABC news about this, and quoted in this article about the costs of developing a search engine.
Do you think newspapers should pay search engines for links and/or showing snippets?
I’m not clear what the complaint is besides newspapers are losing money online.
Under normal circumstances of a search engine just showing a headline and a snippet in the serp’s then no I don’t think search engines should pay. But we don’t have normal circumstances. Google is a monopoly in many countries and that kinda changes things.
If the search engine is showing an expanded listing, with a paragraph or more of the newspaper’s content displayed on the search engine’s own site then yes the SE ought to pay the paper for scraping it’s content.
Or is the problem that Google not only is the monopolistic gatekeeper for traffic to newspapers, but Google also controls the advertising network shown on newspapers and therefore Google has control over the maximum paid for ads on the newspaper’s website as well as an unaudited final say on counting ad impressions and clicks?
I watched a video interview with Jon von Tetzchner of Vivaldi and he explained that the advertising model has changed for newspapers:
In the old days of the web when we just paid by ad impressions, newspapers with more eyeballs commanded a higher price to display a banner than a site with less traffic. The focus for advertisers was getting their ads on those high volume websites.
In the surveillance web of today, the focus is on the person using the web and showing them adverts based on the surveillance profile built up by Google or FB. It doesn’t matter if the ads are displayed on a high quality, high volume newspaper or the Podunkville Shopper because the ads follow the individual reader around the entire web. This has depressed ad income for publishers.
(I hope I have summarized Jon’s statement accurately.)
I really think, if you want to solve this problem:
You have to break up Google’s search monopoly and ad networks.
As many others have said, search engines paying to provide hyperlinks is crazy and will undermine, not promote the open web; some call it a “tax on links” [0].
Some might argue that displaying a title and snippet is extracting value from publishers. Indeed France have been fighting with Google over this under their interpretation of EU copyright law - called “neighbiouring rights” [1]. Since much of the traffic for publishers comes from search engines, this in itself is illogical and is more a vahicle for picking a fight.
But, yes, if search engines are showing whole paragraphs, or more, then the matter is different.
As you say, the problem is that Google is a monopoly. Governments are understandably looking to regulate; later than they should have.
Australia has acted, and hopefully the UK and others will only take action, against the oligopoly and not all search engines. France, the last I understood, is sadly proposing to act against all search engines; how does that promote competition and fight monopolists?
The topic of surveillance based ads is relevant, but also a big topic meritting discussion in another thread. Suffice it to say, we agree with almost everything Jon has said. Indeed, as you may know, we have been campaigning together with notably Vivaldi, and many others, to ban surveillance based ads.
Slightly off topic. Google really stepped badly into their own muck when they threatened to cut off access to Google for all of Australia. That threat, backfired spectacularly and spurred a lot of countries in the EU and the EU, that had been watching the situation, to finally act against Google. Plus Microsoft stepping in to reassure Australia that MS would insure enough bandwidth access to Bing should Google cut the Aussies off.
By their threat, Google underlined their monopolistic status to the world and did themselves much more harm than good.
I’m concerned about journalism. And though these kinds of schemes won’t make sense to many people today, I’m inclined to give it a try.
It is also worth noting the lede from the Daily Mail was:
Tech giants such as Google and Facebook will be required to pay newspapers and other media outlets for using their stories, under new laws being drawn up by the Government.
… which is much more specific than the broad concern of netizens paying for links. I don’t see this as a broad threat to freedom or business.
Also, the actions of the French regulator seemed thoughtful and in line with competitive business theory. And I’m less concerned when I see that kind of example.
Laws should apply equally. And while Mojeek might nominally be affected by French law, there might be no practical effect since Mojeek is not acting anticompetitively.