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France rules Google must pay news firms for content
- Sujan 6y agoI wish Google would finally go with the kneejerk reaction of just unlisting all these sites from Google Search and News.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoEssentially France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service. They must do it, they must pay for it.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> France has said Google, being a monopoly, is not allowed to refuse to provide this service If it’s not providing the service, it’s no longer a monopoly. Assuming this will survive European appeal, which I don’t, one could yank all resources and cap e.g. bandwidth to Google News France. The aim isn’t to cripple the product. It’s to limit costs on a statutorily lossmaking product.
- Reventlov 6y agoWell, the decision covers the fact google search is a monopoly. Not google news. Google, being in a monopoly position in terms of search, can forces newspaper to provide their data for free, which is unfair. If google wasn't in a monopoly (for search), it wouldn't be a problem. So, yes, indeed, Google can stop providing search for the whole France.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> Google, being in a monopoly position in terms of search, can forces newspaper to provide their data for free, which is unfair It should be able to just de-list news sources for French searchers. Again, I can’t see this surviving a non-French EU court. If it did, zeroing resources to crawling French news sites would be a reasonable response. All that said, this is a silly way to go about subsidising local news. If France wants its newspapers, subsidise them. Don’t force an American company to provide you with a service and then make them pay for it.
- Reventlov 6y ago>If France wants its newspapers, subsidise them. It's already done, let's note.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- imgabe 6y agoThe newspapers are providing their data for free to anyone who visits their website, assuming it's not behind a paywall. Google isn't forcing them to do that. If they want people to have to pay for it, make that a requirement of visiting the site.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoMany do. However, then Google punishes their search rankings for having a paywall. Forcing them to offer their data for free if they want to show up in search.
- CamperBob2 6y agoSo, they should start their own news search engine. Problem solved.
- imgabe 6y agoThen they should not be dependent on search traffic. The fact is, despite some politicians declaring it a fundamental right, the news does not provide enough value to most people for them to pay for it. There is an absolute glut of content out there, way way more than anybody wants or needs. Much of it is less than worthless, it's actually of negative value because it's designed to hijack your attention. Remove the infusion of ad money that is producing this, let it settle to the things that people are actually willing to pay for, and we'll all be better off.
- droithomme 6y agoThe newspapers should pay Google if they want to be listed.
- zajio1am 6y agoAs a search engine user i am glad for that, as websites behind paywall are useless for me. If i pay for a news site, i would go directly to it, and i would not care about hundreds of other paywalled results that i would not pay for.
- droithomme 6y ago> the fact google search is a monopoly Except it's not. I never use Google, I use DuckDuckGo. If DDG fails I try Bing. I have google and facebook domains blocked from access in my system because I don't like their tracking. Lots of other people search without Google. Google is simply not a monopoly in the search game.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoGoogle has over 90% of search market share in Europe. The statement that Google is a monopoly isn't really debatable. And the fact that you can use another search engine doesn't change the power Google has, because everyone else uses Google. So your website has to play by Google's rules if you want to be found.
- droithomme 6y ago> The statement that Google is a monopoly isn't really debatable. OK, let's not debate. We'll just agree that the statement is empirically false.
- slavak 6y agoA monopoly is not _just_ a company that controls 100% of the market. If pure monopolies were the only kind the term referred to it would be all but useless. https://bizfluent.com/about-6601606-monopoly-economics-.html https://bizfluent.com/about-6601606-monopoly-economics-.html
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- Udik 6y agoSolution: keep running google news, but without the snippets. You search for news, you get a set of mute links to articles from various sources.
- neilparikh 6y agoAccording to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843579 , the court forbid that as well.
- inetsee 6y agoThat's what Google already did. The results include the article titles, but no longer include the snippets that expanded on the information in the title.
- panzagl 6y agoThat was specifically denied by the ruling.
- georgyo 6y agoThe ruling states they _must_ index, provide snippets, and pay. Google did remove the snippets, which hurt the news sites traffic, such is mostly Google referrals. This ruling makes it so they must index and pay.
- Talanes 6y agoEveryone keeps replying to tell you they were forbidden from doing that, but they weren't. They ran with that option PLUS sending out contracts to get the newspapers to license the photos and snippet content for free. It's the second part that the courts objected to.
- zepto 6y agoI don’t see that anywhere. It seems that they are free to completely stop showing news sites.
- mc32 6y agoI agree, pull the plug on them. Let’s see what they say then. I can’t imagine them forcing Google to list them but also pay them. Let’s see how organic traffic works for them.
- eli 6y agoBad for users in the meantime.
- qnsi 6y agonot really Google's fault but publisher's.
- CamperBob2 6y agoMaybe the users will remember that in the next election.
- trekrich 6y agoThey should, and when they come back asking for it all to be undone they should say no. Let them swim for a little bit so france does not try this again. This was tried in spain, and quickly reversed.
- Marsymars 6y ago> This was tried in spain, and quickly reversed. No it wasn't, Google News is still not available in Spain.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoSo what you're saying is Google should have more power and authority than actual nations.
- renewiltord 6y agoThere's no total order of power and authority. I want the US government to not have the power and authority to set up and run a church but I want that power and authority, and I'm pretty sure I want Google to have that power and authority. So yeah, I want Google to be able to say "I don't want to list papers that won't do this for free", yes.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago> I want Google to be able to say "I don't want to list papers that won't do this for free" That's up to the french people to decide. Google negotiating with nations as if it was a trade agreement between equals would mean we're living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
- renewiltord 6y agoThat's the dream. When governments cannot simply impose their will on me at a whim. The fault isn't that Google can negotiate as an equal. The fault is that I can't negotiate as an equal when I want to marry a man or abort a foetus or drug myself. And I'd rather erode the power of the government than of myself every single time. And I'm pretty sure the French people don't get to decide what I want. Only I get to decide that.
- fab13n 6y agothat's exactly what they did last year when the law came into force. Then newspapers could fill a form begging Google to accept their content for free, which most of them did. I don't know what this post refers to, haven't had time to check yet.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoEssentially France has now said refusing to list sites unless they grant the right to do it for free is illegal. Because the only reason Google has the power to demand free access is their monopoly. They have demanded Google negotiate a fair price for the ability to display the news snippets.
- jstanley 6y agoGiven that the "fair price" is 0, that shouldn't make a lot of difference,
- wolco 6y agoThey should offer a revenue share for all ads on the newspaper pages. And force them to use adsense.
- droithomme 6y agoI disagree. I think a fair price is below zero. The news sites should pay Google if they want their sites listed.
- zajio1am 6y ago> Because the only reason Google has the power to demand free access is their monopoly. That is not really obvious Consired situation where Google is not a monopoly and there is active market with search engines and each search engine needs to establish contract with each news site. Now consider case where one search engine that already has contracts with half of all news sites is negotiating a contract with a news site that already has contracts with half search engines. Who gains more from such contract? I would guess that the news site, becase such contract would directly lead to higher ad revenue, while for search engine it would lead to better search results that may or may not lead to higher ad revenue, but the effect would be most likely sublinear. Therefore, marginal utility of contract is higher for news site and it is possible that in negotiation search engine could got payments from it.
- blondin 6y agonot sure i follow... this is about showing a snippet of a news article at the top of search result right? similar to pulling youtube videos, wikipedia articles, or stackoverflow answers and showing them at the top of your search result. i mean, sometimes, i don't even leave the search result page because i get my answer right there. heck, i don't even leave my address bar nowadays when using chrome! news publications seems to be struggling and if google needs to support them then why not give them a little of the ads money?
- vntok 6y agoBut Google doesn't need to support them.
- blendergeek 6y agoWell, there are no ads in Google News. So, Google just will share their other revenue with news agencies?
- dopidop 6y agoGoogle news main and only feature is to crawl existing news website. Those news agency are actually putting natural language together and conducting journalist work. Until google can auto-generate NYT/Guardian/Le monde/El pays... The leech is google; not the news.
- badrabbit 6y agoWhy? Google derives value from news site's content. Advertisers pay google for clicks,if google treated news sites the same as any other site there would be no problem but google is adding additional value to their own product at the expense of news sites without additonal compensation. You seem to think it is a priviledge to be listed on google, I disagree, it is a priviledge for google to be allowed to conduct business, one that comes with a long list of conditions including fair business practice,paying taxes, hiring fairly,etc...
- izacus 6y ago> Why? Google derives value from news site's content. Advertisers pay google for clicks,if google treated news sites the same as any other site there would be no problem but google is adding additional value to their own product at the expense of news sites without additonal compensation. Hmm, sorry, this makes no sense - in this context the only possible advertisers are the news companies themselves (this is how you add your Ad to Google) and they want to be paid for this listing, not the other way around. Can you explain more how does Google derive value from these news articles?
- dilyevsky 6y agoYou and me googling for news sites and presumably clicking on ads (which I’m not really sure are even shown for news queries). In reality I think news sites benefit a lot more from being featured in that feed but i guess we’ll find out soon enough if that’s true
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- pmart123 6y agoI agree. Google has gotten a lot worse for long tail searches over the last year. My feeling is they felt pressured by major news outlets in the US to only display “trusted” sources. Now I only get company links or nytimes versus an expert blog on the subject matter.
- m-p-3 6y agoAre they (news firms) going to charge a fee to access RSS feeds at some point now? That judgment seems to be absurd, especially if they only provided a snippet of the article for data discovery purpose. I'm not sure that would help those news firms if they get blackholed from Google altogether.
- jimmaswell 6y agoEurope's not going to stop until the internet is totally burned to the ground, are they?
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoOr the illegal monopoly controlling it is.
- gambiting 6y agoYou mean the US, right? Also these decisions are done on the national level - France can rule whatever they want, it has no impact on the other EU member states.
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- perceptronas 6y agoFair point if you are referring to cookie notices, link taxes, filters. However, this decision is only for France
- na85 6y agoSeems to me the EU and GDPR-like legislation is saving the internet from the cancer of corporate control, particularly American Big Data like Google and Facebook. The latter are the ones burning the internet down with their walled gardens.
- gliboc 6y agoThank you: this conversation was beginning to feel surreal, between the "let's pull the plug on these frenchies!" and the "how dare a sovereign state wants to legiferate on the activities of an American company on its territory"... I do enjoy the irony of some Americans blaming big data companies when the president of their choice does not get elected, all the while advocating for less power to French news agencies (e.g. death by asphyxiation from Google news, without any recourse).
- blakesterz 6y agoI think this is the actual judgement? https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de-presse/droits-voisins-lautorite-fait-droit-aux-demandes-de-mesures-conservatoires https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/fr/communiques-de-pre... This techcrunch post has more details than Reuters: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/frances-competition-watchdog-orders-google-to-pay-for-news-reuse/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/09/frances-competition-watchd... Abusive practices the agency says it suspects Google of at this stage of its investigation are: The imposition of unfair trading conditions; circumvention of the law; and discrimination (i.e. because of its unilateral policy of zero renumeration for all publishers)
- Multicomp 6y ago> discrimination (i.e. because of its unilateral policy of zero renumeration for all publishers) Umm ianal but isn't saying all publishers don't get paid the opposite of discrimination? If they said some American companies get paid but not french etc I would totally get it.
- fllsdf 6y agoInal either but the way the court phrases it in the press release is that google negociated a free use licence with everyone, regardless of their financial situations, using their dominant position on the market to "force" everyone. A way of seeing this is that it might be fine for the big players for national and international news (Le monde, Le figaro ...) , but probably has a much bigger impact on small news outlet, because if they dont agree they are at a disadvatage obviously, so they cannot afford to say no, but at the same time they might already be in a difficult financial position, and that revenu might have helped. The key part is that google had no real justification according to the court to treat everyone the same way, and that consitutes discrimination. It seems a bit weird to me too but you could make a parallel to a school that has a set meal price for every student, regardless of parent income.This would obviously be discriminating towards the poorer students. Now whether google is a public service the way school lunches are is up for debate but i think it basically comes down to equality vs equity
- smogcutter 6y agoI get that HN hates journalists, but other than that I don’t see why people are on google’s side here. Is it about personal convenience? If you want to scrape someone else’s work and display it next to your own ads, it doesn’t seem crazy to ask you to pay up.
- ac29 6y agoGoogle News doesn't have ads. In fact, its primary purpose appears to be to drive traffic to publisher's sites, which do have ads (presumably Google hopes they are Google ads).
- pdkl95 6y ago> Google News doesn't have ads A traditional abuse of monopoly power is providing a good or service at a loss to gain control of a new market.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agohow long has Google news been running, I would think they had control of that market long ago if that's what they were aiming for.
- pdkl95 6y agoIndeed they have had control of that market for some time. Being a dominant position over a market generally isn't illegal, but most antitrust laws put restrictions on how that monopoly power can be used.
- qnsi 6y agoNo. In traditional sense it's having higher not lower price, forcing buyers to pay more. Monopoly by definition already has 100% of the market
- pdkl95 6y ago
- hiccuphippo 6y agoI wonder if France ultimately wants Google to pay for the content and the News sites to pay Google for listing them, reaching a net of zero for both sides, other than the taxes that France banks from both sides.
- bagacrap 6y agodoes France get tax revenue in this scenario? Usually corporate expenses are tax deductible, ie you only pay tax on profit.
- Reventlov 6y agoThe actual PDF of the decision is there: https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/integral_texts/2020-04/20mc01.pdf https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/i... The arguments are: - Press freedom is a fundamental right - The press is not in its best state right now in France, so hitting them (for example, removing them from the search result from Google, which is in a monopoly position) is dangerous for the press freedom - Google did not try to negotiate a fair price for the news, with the publisher - Google applying a "zero price" for newspaper is not reasonable, as google has an economic incentive (users using its search engine) to display the news paper content in its search engine and in google news - Google is in a monopoly decision, as most of the traffic of the newspapers comes from Google - Google is discriminatory as it applies to newspapers equal treatments, even if they are in different situations (newspaper with protected content, and newspaper without protected content) - Google tries to bypass the spirit of the law, which is for newspapers to get paid for their content by people using their content, and Google can do so because it's in a monopoly position in search - Google does not has objectives explanations regarding its behavior besides « we don't pay for content », but paid for content in the past (for example, the french agency AFP) The decision is manyfold: - Google has to enter negociations, in a fair manner (I think this means no « we will not pay anything » unless they can back it off); - The price decided by the negociations will be applied retroactively, from the date the new law was passed - They have to report to the authority every three months the progress they make on this - Restore the service they provided to newspapers to what was in place before the new law was voted Let's note the court making this decision can not decide what the law is, and applies it as it was voted; even if it thinks some part of the law sucks, they cannot change it, it's not their role in the justice system.
- PunksATawnyFill 6y agoThese claims seem irrelevant, inaccurate, or dumb. Google News only shows brief abstracts from each article, and drives traffic to the publications' own sites. It's free advertising! How is this at all BAD for the publications?
- Reventlov 6y ago
- kerhackernews 6y agoWhile this is a complicated situation, it's clear that Google is profiting greatly off of journalistic works while these same organizations are struggling to survive.
- sneak 6y agoI think that in a strict interpretation of current copyright attitudes, web spidering/mirroring in general is probably an infringement if you then republish any part of that content in any way for your own benefit. Imagine if you made a "Google for Twitter" today; you'd be sued out of existence. I believe precisely this happened with LinkedIn, IIRC. I think the concept of copyrights is fundamentally incompatible with an open web, ultimately. It should be that a webserver sending you a response to your request is an implicit usage license. After all, the webserver doesn't have to send you anything. If it does, we take that to be an implicit agreement that you can have and use the data. That should be codified as law, because it is the current convention.
- westurner 6y agoWebsite monetization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_monetization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_monetization Web Monetization API (ILP: Interledger Protocol) > A JavaScript browser API which allows the creation of a payment stream from the user agent to the website. > Web Monetization is being proposed as a #W3C standard at the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. https://webmonetization.org/ https://webmonetization.org/ Interledger: Web Monetization API https://interledger.org/rfcs/0028-web-monetization/ https://interledger.org/rfcs/0028-web-monetization/ Khan Academy, for example, accepts BAT (Basic Attention Token) micropayments/microdonations that e.g. Brave browser users can opt to share with the content producers and indexers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Basic_Attention_Token https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Basic_Atte... Web Monetization w/ Interledger should enable any payments system with low enough transaction costs ("ledger-agnostic, currency agnostic") to be used to pay/tip/donate to content producers who are producing unsensational, unbiased content that people want to pay for. Paywalls/subscriptions and ads are two other approaches to funding quality journalism. Should journalists pay ScholarlyArticle authors whose studies they publish summaries of without even citing the DOI/URL and Title; or the journals said ScholarlyArticles are published in? https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle https://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle
- eric1293 6y agoThis is typical of France. You must provide this service and you must pay. I recommend Google cutting limiting its services to France.
- bgorman 6y agoThe problem is that "press freedom" as a right should not mean "The press MUST receive leads through all search engines and the search engines MUST pay for doing so". "Press freedom" historically means that the press can publish anything factual, artistic, or opinion based without fear of government censorship or retribution. We are seeing the EU and various EU countries redefine fundamental terms for entirely different things, to the point where the original rights are completely eroded, and instead we have a system that effectively serves special interest groups in Europe. An infamous example of this is the "right to be forgotten". In Europe there is now a process where individuals can effectively censor the internet/press from publishing factual information about their past transgressions. Ostensibly this is to allow the individual to move on with their life. For example, someone convicted of murder has successfully removed articles related to his murder from the internet (in Europe). This is incredibly dangerous. Why should the government get to decide what fact based censorship is irrelevant or not? I certainly think it is pertinent for society to know about past murders. The EU is slowly eroding all individual liberties, while its markets are becoming less competitive and its welfare state expands to unprecedented levels. Free speech and freedom or religion are much worse in Europe. Germany is run by a Christian political party. In addition to no longer being able to advocate for Nazi politics in Germany, now you cannot speak about certain facts that have occurred in the past. Now France is attempting this novel "shake down of tech giants we cannot compete with" strategy, which is frankly a strategy that was until recently more likely to be seen in an Authoritarian country like China than the country that was the inspiration for the US independence.
- lowdose 6y agoDid you also notice an European brain drain?
- samatman 6y ago> the country that was the inspiration for the US independence. The United States declared independence in 1776, and the storming of the Bastille was in 1789. I'm pretty sure the arrow of causality runs in the opposite direction from what you describe.
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- hartator 6y agoSo I have to pay if I want to make my own news site that have links to French news website? Best way to ensure that Google stay super dominant.
- franczesko 6y agoGoogle needs to finally stop being a parasite - both on the economy and other people's work. The content is not theirs. Pay up and support the ecosystem, if you want to use it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoHow exactly is Google the parasite here? They are only providing links to content since the publishers didn't want them to provide snippets or previews. So literally the only thing that Google is providing is a link to the content on the publisher's site.
- edmundsauto 6y agoIt's more than a link, it's a snippet with the tldr of the article. Google's purpose in doing that is to answer the user's query without directing them to the news site. Users love this -- I know that I do! But France is basically saying, if you want access to our population, you'll have to play by our rules. I think that is also fair; Google certainly plays by local rules elsewhere.
- Talanes 6y agoGoogle was still providing full content, just after getting the providers to sign free contracts. THAT was the behavior the French court came down on them for. They were given the option to just provide link and title and chose to try and have their cake and eat it too.
- edmundsauto 6y agoIt looks like the decision also said Google aren't allowed to remove the results.
- anfilt 6y agoWhile I an not a fan of google for a lot reasons this decision is pretty wacky. This ruling says google must provide a service, but they must also pay those who use it... How does this make any sense. It’s akin to the government forcing someone to stand at a street corner shouting and advertising for someone. However, every-time a persons goes into the business because your advertising you must pay that business... Like can google just pull out France? I don't see how anyone could negotiate under such insanity? Like the bigger issue is BS like AMP that will take traffic away from the sites. Why is that not a concern... Where as indexing things is an old idea. Like if you applied this to card catalogs, phone books, and heck references in papers this ruling makes no sense.
- neil_s 6y agoI think seeing this as an antagonistic situation between Google and the news sites is less than ideal. Google provides value to the news sites by driving traffic to them, and Publishers provide value to Google by helping provide more complete search results. If we could help the Publishers have more sustainable ways to make meaningful revenues off traffic once it visits the site, they wouldn't be trying to bite the arm that feeds them traffic. But instead of the news industry and the government trying to find ways to sustainably pay for news in an "information abundance" economy, they're turning their sights to a company that happens to have a large wallet but has already demonstrated it would get more value out of simply turning off news (like in Spain) than paying for the content because the fair value of showing the snippets or even the article links is far too low to it.
- curryst 6y agoUser generated content has vastly decreased the value proposition of newspapers. Looking at sites like Reddit, a lot of users read the headline, maybe skim the first paragraph or two of the article, and then go straight to the comments. Where people would once have read articles from multiple view points about a particular issue, they now read the headline and get opposing views in the comments. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are hundreds or thousands of news sources all paying someone to write an article about the same bit of information. The industry is going to end up collapsing to a much smaller number of organizations and they'll likely become profitable as the user views aren't split among so many sources.
- imgabe 6y agoWhat is to stop someone from starting a "newspaper" in France, hiring the cheapest freelancers possible to write whatever (or generating stories with AI) and collecting free money from Google?
- allendoerfer 6y agoAs a European, I have to say: The sooner non-innovative media companies die, the better. Replacing Google is hard, but replacing Google News, really is not. Ignoring reality and trying to lobby the EU to an absert extent will harm their business in the long term. There are organizations with working business models like the German public stations[1] (ARD, ZDF, DW, arte and others), which are publicly funded and thus prepared for the future. These are even trying to innovate, e.g. by providing textual content for the web or by trying for years to create a single unified Netflix competitor for their video content, but they are being shut down with lawsuits from companies like Bertelsmann, too (in a similiar fashion like the story about the public weather data, recently here on HN). I think at this point these companies have to wake up and realize that their old model is lost. I see four options for them: 1) Get in line and try to find shelter within those publicly funded systems. Use your lobbying budget to accomplish that. 2) Be the best. Find a niche. There will always be room for a few remaining. 3) Team up and create your own system. 4) Die. But don't slow everyone down endlessly trying to rent seek based on the working competition or the threats form US companies. In the end, I don't see Europe losing anything to the US here, but instead the publicly funded organizations surving. When I look at an other market providing a human right, namely healtcare, I don't see Europe being worse off in the end at all. [1] These stations do have their own problems: Endless layers of management and administration.
- datingscientist 6y agoWhat happens if you make cost an inverse ranking factor? Structure your ranking algorithm to allocate a proportionate share of traffic to french news sites, given relevancy to a query topic, and rank order publishers by negotiated cost? Given there is SUBSTANTIAL value in a news publisher being sent traffic, in terms of advertising and circulation, the power law in search engine clicks should keep cost paid to a bare minimum. Unless the French are going full dystopia and picking the winners within their own markets?
- malinens 6y agoI work for a popular web portal in my country and we also have news aggregator. There are revenue sharing deals with quite a few news providers where we share ad revenue when we show those snippets. Both portal and news providers win...