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> ... these events are happening at a time when the news industry is also being challenged financially Yeah, and what's challenging to the "news industry" is t

> ... these events are happening at a time when the news industry is also being challenged financially Yeah, and what's challenging to the "news industry" is the monopolistic situation on the web and the utter lack of action on the part of US antitrust authorities and their allies. I find it very worrying that Der Spiegel, once the most frequently visited ad-supported news sites in the "old" German web, sees no other hope than partnering with Google. Sorry if I'm being too harsh, but the problem can't be solved by Google, when the problem is Google. Der Spiegel once more showing they completely outsold their journalistic punch and demonstrating basic media incompetence (which is the very last thing you want a credible publisher to do).

quantummkv 6y ago
Actions like these start making a lot of sense if you start viewing Google and their friends as a bunch of hi-tech mafioso. Newspapers are essentially forced to pay protection money and then publicly kiss the ring, declare their allegiance and pray that the deal is not altered further.
- wbl 6y ago
  Google doesn't compete with papers but link papers to readers.
  - tomgp 6y ago
    News papers business is selling ads, that’s Google’s Business too. Google has an advantage over individual publications in that it can track user behaviour across multiple sites. So news outlets have made deals with google to act as brokers for their ad space giving google more power and the ability to effectively set ad prices. Google regularly throws news organisations pitiful sums of ‘innovation’ money for PR purposes whilst creaming multiple times that amount off their revenue streams. It’s going to take a brave publication to question the value of Google’s algorithm and bring ad sales in-house but I think that’s the only way out of this situation.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      A lot of outlets still do in-house ad sales—especially those that run print and standalone digital issues still. Unfortunately, while there is still some business there—it's nothing compared to what it used to be. Most companies just go the online ads route now. I would love to see the kind of push back you mention... but it would be a David v. Goliath task at this stage, except David forgot his sling at home.
  - tannhaeuser 6y ago
    GOOG, FB, and AMZN extract all value out of the web, the music industry, retail, IT/cloud, soon e-learning, and basically everything, with content creators getting nothing. In music, we've already seen the effect of no monetary feedback for too many years now; save for very few counterexamples, we haven't seen any innovation since the 1990's; instead we have raised a generation of YouTube addicts. That is the problem to solve sooner rather than later; it doesn't matter how and why we got here, and it's not a question of whether Google or someone else did anything wrong. It's about how we can go on in a civil society with large public investments into eg IP networking, law enforcement, etc. to only line the pockets of very very few.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      What’s wrong with YouTube? I frequently find far better content there than anywhere in the traditional media. I think we’re really lucky to have YouTube - it’s one little ray of hope.
      - LockAndLol 6y ago
        YouTube is the biggest site for music copyright infringement. Not even the pirate could've dreamed of such a massive music distribution network that doesn't remunerate artists. YouTube is also a monopoly that wields its power with impunity. Content creators can be in business one day and out of it the next. Large corporations can claim nearly anything theirs and Google won't do anything about it while smaller content creators can see their IP infringed upon by the former and have no recourse.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > that doesn't remunerate artists I think if you use copyright music YouTube detects that’s automatically and gives them the ad revenue? That’s what the Vevo agreement was.
        LockAndLol 6y ago
        It remunerates labels and copyright trolls way more than it does artists. It's also been known to incorrectly identify sources of copyright infringement and unjustly take away ad revenue. I long stopped following it, but I imagine there's a subreddit called /r/youtubedrama (or the like) that documents that quite well.
Shivetya 6y ago
tl;dr it isn't truly google, aggregators force news organizations into competition and the lack of willingness of people to pay you cannot solve google unless you want to outlaw any site aggregating results from across the web. that is what is really clobbering the news industry. they now have to compete with each other when before at most they competed across one city and at most one country for people's attention and money. I do find it bizarre that on this site that people complain about Google and ads when most brag about blocking them and still complaining about how intrusive some advertising solutions are. Then throw in the crowd that is always complaining about how much something cost or how some services should be free or reduced and then you might be getting close to the other half of the problem. People are fucking cheap. If they don't have to pay they will more than likely go that route and quite a few will accept a sub standard experience. Part of that acceptance is from truly desiring to save money but some if from "sticking it to them" in reference to the company they perceive they are short changing.
CM30 6y ago
Nah, it's because the internet lets you find hundreds or thousands of news sources very easily, and the lack of willingness for people to pay for subscriptions/ease of setting up an ad supported news site means there's no reason to pay money for any of them. The traditional media only surived because they had little competition and there's a decent barrier to entry when it came to publishing information/news. Now they're competing with every other media outlet in the world, plus anyone with a blog or YouTube channel. Add this to ways the news is discussed online (people can just paraphrase details from stories and discuss them on social media), and the value of a news story has just completely crashed. Does that mean Google and Facebook haven't done any damage? No probably not. The fact they control so much of the advertising market has had some effects, and some might say things like requiring paywalled stories to be viewable without a subscription in search has had an effect too. But the fundamental issue isn't that. It's that the internet and technology has fundamentally broken the business model these outlets used to rely on, and there's basically nothing they can do to change that.

quantummkv 6y ago

Actions like these start making a lot of sense if you start viewing Google and their friends as a bunch of hi-tech mafioso. Newspapers are essentially forced to pay protection money and then publicly kiss the ring, declare their allegiance and pray that the deal is not altered further.

wbl 6y ago
Google doesn't compete with papers but link papers to readers.
- tomgp 6y ago
  News papers business is selling ads, that’s Google’s Business too. Google has an advantage over individual publications in that it can track user behaviour across multiple sites. So news outlets have made deals with google to act as brokers for their ad space giving google more power and the ability to effectively set ad prices. Google regularly throws news organisations pitiful sums of ‘innovation’ money for PR purposes whilst creaming multiple times that amount off their revenue streams. It’s going to take a brave publication to question the value of Google’s algorithm and bring ad sales in-house but I think that’s the only way out of this situation.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    A lot of outlets still do in-house ad sales—especially those that run print and standalone digital issues still. Unfortunately, while there is still some business there—it's nothing compared to what it used to be. Most companies just go the online ads route now. I would love to see the kind of push back you mention... but it would be a David v. Goliath task at this stage, except David forgot his sling at home.
- tannhaeuser 6y ago
  GOOG, FB, and AMZN extract all value out of the web, the music industry, retail, IT/cloud, soon e-learning, and basically everything, with content creators getting nothing. In music, we've already seen the effect of no monetary feedback for too many years now; save for very few counterexamples, we haven't seen any innovation since the 1990's; instead we have raised a generation of YouTube addicts. That is the problem to solve sooner rather than later; it doesn't matter how and why we got here, and it's not a question of whether Google or someone else did anything wrong. It's about how we can go on in a civil society with large public investments into eg IP networking, law enforcement, etc. to only line the pockets of very very few.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    What’s wrong with YouTube? I frequently find far better content there than anywhere in the traditional media. I think we’re really lucky to have YouTube - it’s one little ray of hope.
    - LockAndLol 6y ago
      YouTube is the biggest site for music copyright infringement. Not even the pirate could've dreamed of such a massive music distribution network that doesn't remunerate artists. YouTube is also a monopoly that wields its power with impunity. Content creators can be in business one day and out of it the next. Large corporations can claim nearly anything theirs and Google won't do anything about it while smaller content creators can see their IP infringed upon by the former and have no recourse.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > that doesn't remunerate artists I think if you use copyright music YouTube detects that’s automatically and gives them the ad revenue? That’s what the Vevo agreement was.
        LockAndLol 6y ago
        It remunerates labels and copyright trolls way more than it does artists. It's also been known to incorrectly identify sources of copyright infringement and unjustly take away ad revenue. I long stopped following it, but I imagine there's a subreddit called /r/youtubedrama (or the like) that documents that quite well.

Shivetya 6y ago

tl;dr it isn't truly google, aggregators force news organizations into competition and the lack of willingness of people to pay you cannot solve google unless you want to outlaw any site aggregating results from across the web. that is what is really clobbering the news industry. they now have to compete with each other when before at most they competed across one city and at most one country for people's attention and money. I do find it bizarre that on this site that people complain about Google and ads when most brag about blocking them and still complaining about how intrusive some advertising solutions are. Then throw in the crowd that is always complaining about how much something cost or how some services should be free or reduced and then you might be getting close to the other half of the problem. People are fucking cheap. If they don't have to pay they will more than likely go that route and quite a few will accept a sub standard experience. Part of that acceptance is from truly desiring to save money but some if from "sticking it to them" in reference to the company they perceive they are short changing.

CM30 6y ago

Nah, it's because the internet lets you find hundreds or thousands of news sources very easily, and the lack of willingness for people to pay for subscriptions/ease of setting up an ad supported news site means there's no reason to pay money for any of them. The traditional media only surived because they had little competition and there's a decent barrier to entry when it came to publishing information/news. Now they're competing with every other media outlet in the world, plus anyone with a blog or YouTube channel. Add this to ways the news is discussed online (people can just paraphrase details from stories and discuss them on social media), and the value of a news story has just completely crashed. Does that mean Google and Facebook haven't done any damage? No probably not. The fact they control so much of the advertising market has had some effects, and some might say things like requiring paywalled stories to be viewable without a subscription in search has had an effect too. But the fundamental issue isn't that. It's that the internet and technology has fundamentally broken the business model these outlets used to rely on, and there's basically nothing they can do to change that.