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>Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse. They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up
by sparkzilla 9y ago
>Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse.
They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up their distribution. Links to news sites on Google and Facebook are a form of distribution that link back to the original article. As for antitrust, that's somewhat difficult to argue when a new entrant (Facebook) is currently taking a massive amount of distribution and ad revenue away from Google. Who's to say that another new entrant, funded by the legacy news industry, couldn't do the same?
The legacy news media should have, and still should, focus on making or buying new distribution channels. Instead of whining to the government, they should compete in the market.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoArguably, between AMP and Instant Articles, the original articles don't really count as "in play" anymore. I doubt news is as easy to enter as you imagine. Google and Facebook are in it due to their dominance in search and social respectively. Both are arguably monopolies in their respective fields, and news distribution runs secondary to that. I see where they're coming from, but it's also hard to imagine a legal framework that supports what they'd like to have here in the US.