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Excuse me, you find it ok that Google et al get all the ad money by republishing and publishers and content creators get nothing? And even go so far as spinning

Excuse me, you find it ok that Google et al get all the ad money by republishing and publishers and content creators get nothing? And even go so far as spinning this into an EU corruption story, where the only alternative, and the one we're living through right now, is to rely on a monopolist for news?

Kiro 7y ago
> and content creators get nothing? Axel Springer had to revert because their traffic and revenues plummeted. With your logic it wouldn't even have affected them.
AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
Could you please explain to me how Google is making money from showing a brief excerpt from a linked website. Especially "all the money". Before you answer, please consider where most of Google's revenue comes from. Is it from showing things on their search page or is it from their ad network? Making money from the latter requires people to actually click through to the site. Maybe I am missing something, so please enlighten us.
- simias 7y ago
  In order to display ads Google needs users to use its websites. Google being able to offer news snippets on his website is a feature that drives traffic and therefore drives ad impressions and therefore revenue. It's like saying that Google doesn't benefit from GMail because people reading mail doesn't make them money. I guess an other way to answer this question would be to say: if Google doesn't care at al about previews, why did they develop the feature in the first place and then fought against these laws instead of just removing it as soon as people started complaining? Clearly they do deem them valuable enough to go through this whole charade.
  - AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
    Those impressions are not from the search site but come into play once people click on a link. Google has an incentive to have people click on links. Including news sites. Especially news sites that come with tons of ads. Let's say I blog about topics a lot of other people blog about. Let's say there was a Google Blogs. I would want Google to post a relevant snippet of my blog post to help me stand out from all the other links. And Google would happily comply, because this makes those who bought ads that now get displayed on my blog happy, and Google can charge them more money. I'd say I would have to have a very twisted and self absorbed mindset to believe that Google is stealing from me for posting a relevant excerpt from my blog. But maybe that's just me.
    - kd5bjo 7y ago
      > Google has an incentive to have people click on links. This is true only insofar as it incentivizes people to come to Google in the first place. If Google can directly provide the information that the user is looking for, then it gains no benefit from sending the user elsewhere instead.
      - AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
        Again: Google's revenue comes from ads. Those ads are not on their search site. They are on the sites people click. How can you still believe, Google has no benefit from sending people to those sites?! Second, in most cases those previews are too small to provide the information the user was looking for. Your argument is based on false assumptions.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Since you're asking so politely: Google is in the business of targetted advertisement. It doesn't matter whether they're sending you to a website; they profit from your attention and the info you give them about yourself. The insane amount of money they extract won't benefit content creators and anyway it ending in the hands of a quasi-monopoly can't be in the public interest.
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    Let's say Google has a user on the Google News page and has a couple of levers they can pull to control if that User clicks through to read the content or only skims headlines and some snippets. Given that there are no ads on Google News and Google makes money from most online ad sales, what reason would Google have to limit click throughs? Clicking on am article gives Google more data and increases the chances that Google will make some money from ad sales. Google definitely wants Google News to be the starting point for news reading habbits, but Google definitely also wants it's readers to click through and view news articles. There are plenty of anti-competitive practices by Google to address. This simply is not one of them and arguably does more to shore up Google against competitors given that Google has a stronger ability to force publishers to grant Google access. Publishers already had full opt-out control over how Google uses their content and smaller aggregators were free to ignore those meta headers. Now smaller aggregators must convince publishers to opt-in or face legal consequences. This law is just simply idiotic unless your only goal was to help Google News compete in Europe.
  - AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
    > It doesn't matter whether they're sending you to a website; It does matter for this discussion because this is about Google showing two sentences of an article as preview. And the accusation is that Google somehow steals money from publishers by doing so. I don't like Google, but this accusation is just outright nonsense. > The insane amount of money they extract won't benefit content creators and anyway it ending in the hands of a quasi-monopoly can't be in the public interest. Ah, so it is a matter of principle to you. Taking away from the beast is a good thing. Off with it's head! It nearly sounds like you think that no matter the means, it is always good to just hurtle laws at the quasi-monopoly. That is a dangerous stance, tannhaeuser, because mindlessly throwing stupid laws at the beast might make it stronger, just like it does in this case. And the smaller competition might be crushed before it even existed. But, hey, at least you could take that fork and torch for a spin! I'm all for cutting down Google, Facebook and Microsoft a couple of notches in favour of smaller competition, but I'm dead against using stupid or even dangerous means. This law was put into place by people who hate the internet, and they would set it all aflame if they could. Don't blindly follow destroyers.
signal11 7y ago
Content creators get click throughs. And while I’m not sure if this is specific to me in the UK, news.google.co.uk has no ads. Google News presents an aggregated view of online news. Because of Google’s reach, news.google gets a lot of page views and results in a lot of click-throughs to the actual publisher. Facebook is a similar source of traffic although that’s driven by social sharing. In both cases, publishers benefit a lot assuming they can monetise those page views. I’m not a big fan of Google but Google News isn’t the “bad guy” here.
sacado2 7y ago
Strange to hold such a position on a news aggregator like HN.
- PyroLagus 7y ago
  Well, to be fair. Everyone on here just reads the headlines and then the comments.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Except there are no snippets on HN, just a title and a link.

Kiro 7y ago

> and content creators get nothing? Axel Springer had to revert because their traffic and revenues plummeted. With your logic it wouldn't even have affected them.

AnonymousPlanet 7y ago

Could you please explain to me how Google is making money from showing a brief excerpt from a linked website. Especially "all the money". Before you answer, please consider where most of Google's revenue comes from. Is it from showing things on their search page or is it from their ad network? Making money from the latter requires people to actually click through to the site. Maybe I am missing something, so please enlighten us.

simias 7y ago
In order to display ads Google needs users to use its websites. Google being able to offer news snippets on his website is a feature that drives traffic and therefore drives ad impressions and therefore revenue. It's like saying that Google doesn't benefit from GMail because people reading mail doesn't make them money. I guess an other way to answer this question would be to say: if Google doesn't care at al about previews, why did they develop the feature in the first place and then fought against these laws instead of just removing it as soon as people started complaining? Clearly they do deem them valuable enough to go through this whole charade.
- AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
  Those impressions are not from the search site but come into play once people click on a link. Google has an incentive to have people click on links. Including news sites. Especially news sites that come with tons of ads. Let's say I blog about topics a lot of other people blog about. Let's say there was a Google Blogs. I would want Google to post a relevant snippet of my blog post to help me stand out from all the other links. And Google would happily comply, because this makes those who bought ads that now get displayed on my blog happy, and Google can charge them more money. I'd say I would have to have a very twisted and self absorbed mindset to believe that Google is stealing from me for posting a relevant excerpt from my blog. But maybe that's just me.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    > Google has an incentive to have people click on links. This is true only insofar as it incentivizes people to come to Google in the first place. If Google can directly provide the information that the user is looking for, then it gains no benefit from sending the user elsewhere instead.
    - AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
      Again: Google's revenue comes from ads. Those ads are not on their search site. They are on the sites people click. How can you still believe, Google has no benefit from sending people to those sites?! Second, in most cases those previews are too small to provide the information the user was looking for. Your argument is based on false assumptions.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Since you're asking so politely: Google is in the business of targetted advertisement. It doesn't matter whether they're sending you to a website; they profit from your attention and the info you give them about yourself. The insane amount of money they extract won't benefit content creators and anyway it ending in the hands of a quasi-monopoly can't be in the public interest.
- shkkmo 7y ago
  Let's say Google has a user on the Google News page and has a couple of levers they can pull to control if that User clicks through to read the content or only skims headlines and some snippets. Given that there are no ads on Google News and Google makes money from most online ad sales, what reason would Google have to limit click throughs? Clicking on am article gives Google more data and increases the chances that Google will make some money from ad sales. Google definitely wants Google News to be the starting point for news reading habbits, but Google definitely also wants it's readers to click through and view news articles. There are plenty of anti-competitive practices by Google to address. This simply is not one of them and arguably does more to shore up Google against competitors given that Google has a stronger ability to force publishers to grant Google access. Publishers already had full opt-out control over how Google uses their content and smaller aggregators were free to ignore those meta headers. Now smaller aggregators must convince publishers to opt-in or face legal consequences. This law is just simply idiotic unless your only goal was to help Google News compete in Europe.
- AnonymousPlanet 7y ago
  > It doesn't matter whether they're sending you to a website; It does matter for this discussion because this is about Google showing two sentences of an article as preview. And the accusation is that Google somehow steals money from publishers by doing so. I don't like Google, but this accusation is just outright nonsense. > The insane amount of money they extract won't benefit content creators and anyway it ending in the hands of a quasi-monopoly can't be in the public interest. Ah, so it is a matter of principle to you. Taking away from the beast is a good thing. Off with it's head! It nearly sounds like you think that no matter the means, it is always good to just hurtle laws at the quasi-monopoly. That is a dangerous stance, tannhaeuser, because mindlessly throwing stupid laws at the beast might make it stronger, just like it does in this case. And the smaller competition might be crushed before it even existed. But, hey, at least you could take that fork and torch for a spin! I'm all for cutting down Google, Facebook and Microsoft a couple of notches in favour of smaller competition, but I'm dead against using stupid or even dangerous means. This law was put into place by people who hate the internet, and they would set it all aflame if they could. Don't blindly follow destroyers.

signal11 7y ago

Content creators get click throughs. And while I’m not sure if this is specific to me in the UK, news.google.co.uk has no ads. Google News presents an aggregated view of online news. Because of Google’s reach, news.google gets a lot of page views and results in a lot of click-throughs to the actual publisher. Facebook is a similar source of traffic although that’s driven by social sharing. In both cases, publishers benefit a lot assuming they can monetise those page views. I’m not a big fan of Google but Google News isn’t the “bad guy” here.

sacado2 7y ago

Strange to hold such a position on a news aggregator like HN.

PyroLagus 7y ago
Well, to be fair. Everyone on here just reads the headlines and then the comments.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Except there are no snippets on HN, just a title and a link.