6 ms·

Why whould Google not just delist problematic sites like they did in Germany, as they tried to implement something similar there AFAIK?

throwawayjava 8y ago
The last time I read about these regulations, it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators (i.e., news sites aren't allowed to agree to those terms). I don't have time to check right now, but that may be the case.
- merb 8y ago
  > it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators and than, should they force google to pay instead of cutting these publishers off? in no way would that be legal. you can't force somebody to pay something, by forcing them to obey.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    Yes, you'd like to think it's a free market.
    - merb 8y ago
      well google in the end can just shutdown google news.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > well google in the end can just shutdown google news. That's the expected (and fair) outcome. To be fair, why should a multinational be entitled to profit from unauthirized access and distribution of third-party content while the content creators are left with the bill of creating it?
        AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        News organizations provide a service (news reporting). News aggregators provide a service (news aggregation). Why shouldn't they both get paid? Why should news organizations be entitled to profit from unauthorized access and distribution of third-party content while the creators are left with the bill of creating it? Shouldn't they be paying the celebrities they gossip about for doing all the "noteworthy" things they do and giving them something to drive readership with? The obvious flaw is that it's a symbiotic relationship. News organizations want traffic from Google in the way that celebrities and companies and politicians want news coverage (in the "no such thing as bad press" sense). They see Google's market cap and think they're making all this money, but the money isn't from news aggregation. That's peanuts. And if you're making a dime and they're making a nickel and you demand a dollar more, you don't get a dollar more, you get a dime less.
        geezerjay 8y ago
        > News organizations provide a service (news reporting). News aggregators provide a service (news aggregation). Why shouldn't they both get paid? That's a good question, and it seems to me that's the whole point of this legislation. Currently there is a mega-multinational company which posts record profits for services that consist of scraping and unauthorized distribution of third-party content, and in a manner that even eliminates any traffic from the content creator's site. So in the current state of affairs only the scraper gets paid, and the content creators are left with the bill. How is that fair? > Why should news organizations be entitled to profit from unauthorized access and distribution of third-party content while the creators are left with the bill of creating it? For some reason you've invented this silly idea that researching and developing a newspiece is, somehow, the same as scraping websites. I'm sure that we can agree that journalism and web scraping have nothing in common, just like xeroxing a book is not the same thing as writing a novel.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        > and in a manner that even eliminates any traffic from the content creator's site Not true at all. They actually increase traffic. https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-reveals-the-winners-and-losers-from-a-link-tax/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-r... And you seem to have developed your own silly idea that quoting one or two sentences of a news piece is the same as xeroxing it.
sputr 8y ago
We've been asking the proponents that for months. Google got a free license in Germany while Yahoo did not. Even if they ban the free license (which is a whole nother set of even bigger problems) Google can just not list them at all. It's not like they care about Google News all that much.
- simias 8y ago
  I agree that this is probably going to backfire spectacularly but if we give the proponents the benefit of the doubt it could be argued that while the big G might not care about Google News, users may. If these news aggregator shutdown they will look for alternatives which might create an opportunity for people to develop news aggregator that share the revenue more fairly with the newspapers. I doubt this is going to happen but I suppose it might sound right for people who are not deeply familiar with the way the internet works.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    Has this happened in Spain? They've already done this experiment on a smaller scale.
    - sputr 8y ago
      Google simply shutdown it's operation there.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > If these news aggregator shutdown they will look for alternatives which might create an opportunity for people to develop news aggregator that share the revenue more fairly with the newspapers. The problem is, what revenue? News aggregation is not a huge profit center to begin with. Then you take that already-small amount of money and split it between thousands of independent news organizations, each of which requires its own transaction costs, and the transaction costs sink the whole enterprise.
    - ivanhoe 8y ago

throwawayjava 8y ago

The last time I read about these regulations, it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators (i.e., news sites aren't allowed to agree to those terms). I don't have time to check right now, but that may be the case.

merb 8y ago
> it sounded like they would explicitly forbid this sort of arrangement between publishers and aggregators and than, should they force google to pay instead of cutting these publishers off? in no way would that be legal. you can't force somebody to pay something, by forcing them to obey.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Yes, you'd like to think it's a free market.
  - merb 8y ago
    well google in the end can just shutdown google news.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > well google in the end can just shutdown google news. That's the expected (and fair) outcome. To be fair, why should a multinational be entitled to profit from unauthirized access and distribution of third-party content while the content creators are left with the bill of creating it?
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        News organizations provide a service (news reporting). News aggregators provide a service (news aggregation). Why shouldn't they both get paid? Why should news organizations be entitled to profit from unauthorized access and distribution of third-party content while the creators are left with the bill of creating it? Shouldn't they be paying the celebrities they gossip about for doing all the "noteworthy" things they do and giving them something to drive readership with? The obvious flaw is that it's a symbiotic relationship. News organizations want traffic from Google in the way that celebrities and companies and politicians want news coverage (in the "no such thing as bad press" sense). They see Google's market cap and think they're making all this money, but the money isn't from news aggregation. That's peanuts. And if you're making a dime and they're making a nickel and you demand a dollar more, you don't get a dollar more, you get a dime less.
        geezerjay 8y ago
        > News organizations provide a service (news reporting). News aggregators provide a service (news aggregation). Why shouldn't they both get paid? That's a good question, and it seems to me that's the whole point of this legislation. Currently there is a mega-multinational company which posts record profits for services that consist of scraping and unauthorized distribution of third-party content, and in a manner that even eliminates any traffic from the content creator's site. So in the current state of affairs only the scraper gets paid, and the content creators are left with the bill. How is that fair? > Why should news organizations be entitled to profit from unauthorized access and distribution of third-party content while the creators are left with the bill of creating it? For some reason you've invented this silly idea that researching and developing a newspiece is, somehow, the same as scraping websites. I'm sure that we can agree that journalism and web scraping have nothing in common, just like xeroxing a book is not the same thing as writing a novel.
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        > and in a manner that even eliminates any traffic from the content creator's site Not true at all. They actually increase traffic. https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-reveals-the-winners-and-losers-from-a-link-tax/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-r... And you seem to have developed your own silly idea that quoting one or two sentences of a news piece is the same as xeroxing it.

sputr 8y ago

We've been asking the proponents that for months. Google got a free license in Germany while Yahoo did not. Even if they ban the free license (which is a whole nother set of even bigger problems) Google can just not list them at all. It's not like they care about Google News all that much.

simias 8y ago
I agree that this is probably going to backfire spectacularly but if we give the proponents the benefit of the doubt it could be argued that while the big G might not care about Google News, users may. If these news aggregator shutdown they will look for alternatives which might create an opportunity for people to develop news aggregator that share the revenue more fairly with the newspapers. I doubt this is going to happen but I suppose it might sound right for people who are not deeply familiar with the way the internet works.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  Has this happened in Spain? They've already done this experiment on a smaller scale.
  - sputr 8y ago
    Google simply shutdown it's operation there.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > If these news aggregator shutdown they will look for alternatives which might create an opportunity for people to develop news aggregator that share the revenue more fairly with the newspapers. The problem is, what revenue? News aggregation is not a huge profit center to begin with. Then you take that already-small amount of money and split it between thousands of independent news organizations, each of which requires its own transaction costs, and the transaction costs sink the whole enterprise.
  - ivanhoe 8y ago