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Google is totally in the wrong here, and ACCC is doing its usual good work of protecting the Aussie consumer. It's interesting to watch Google try to squirm out

Google is totally in the wrong here, and ACCC is doing its usual good work of protecting the Aussie consumer. It's interesting to watch Google try to squirm out of this though - they probably see it for the precedent it is. Google relies heavily on third-party content that they don't pay for in search results. If this law forces them to negotiate payment for that practice then I'm all for it.

louissm_it 6y ago
But don’t third-party content providers rely just as much on Google as the inverse?
dannyr 6y ago
I mean it's a search engine so it should rely heavily on third-party content in its search results. Google links to these news sites in search results and drives traffic to them. If Google grabs significant parts of news articles that users don't need to visit the sites, then Google should pay them. But Google is not doing that.
- RVuRnvbM2e 6y ago
  > If Google grabs significant parts of news articles that users don't need to visit the sites, then Google should pay them. But Google is not doing that. So what is AMP then?
  - shakna 6y ago
    The news site giving Google the article. As much as I dislike AMP... Google aren't the ones creating the AMP page.
    - RVuRnvbM2e 6y ago
      > While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp It's pretty blatantly the case that AMP provides a SEO boost. What hosting service could possibly compete with the speed at which Google can retrieve content from their _own_ servers? That's the whole point of this legislation: to give news orgs means to stop Google from twisting their arm in this way.
      - realmod 6y ago
        Literally ANY content delivery network would be able to compete with google. AMP sites are sites that the companies themselves build for google(could be any cdn) to just cache. The news organizations themselves gains a lot from google crawling and indexing their sites (which do cost google money) and now this legislation would also require google to pay them for displaying the title/subtitle of their articles. In what world is that fair or balancing out the relationship?
        Spivak 6y ago
        > would also require google to pay them for displaying the title/subtitle of their articles. In what world is that fair or balancing out the relationship? This is not what the legislation is about. This is about Google's practice of excerpting the actual content of the articles and putting it at the top of the page. Google is algorithmically republishing copyrighted content from these news orgs and hoping that surrounding it in quotes is enough to protect them.
        sidibe 6y ago
        You are ignoring that whether the snippets are shown is already entirely up to the news orgs. In fact I think they're the ones that decide what's in the snippets
        brokenmachine 6y ago
        So the news sites can add a single "*" to their robots.txt. Problem solved.
      - shakna 6y ago
        > While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. That seems to say that is isn't blatantly the case that AMP provides an SEO boost. But that speed does. And there are many CDNs that are on the same edge. AMP isn't about to beat Akamai, for example.
- romanovcode 6y ago
  > But Google is not doing that. Google is doing that. Google is doing exactly that with AMP. Or with "in-page" results e.g. recent RapGenius lyrics scandal.
  - pb7 6y ago
    >recent RapGenius lyrics scandal It got thrown out of court.
justsee 6y ago
Google isn't in the wrong here, and framing this as just an honest consumer-first regulator doing their job omits critical context to help people understand what's happening. The party in power federally is the Coalition, and they are deeply entwined, in a symbiotic relationship, with Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd: illustrated by endless editorial lines supportive of the Coalition in media across the country, revolving doors of Coalition advisors and News Ltd staff, through to regular questionable and controversial decisions in favour of News Ltd. A great example was Foxtel being given a $30 million grant with no process, documentation or explanation around it [1]. It was simply explained as 'media reform'. Like those 'media reforms', these proposed ones are also highly politically-driven and largely to the benefit of News Ltd. This is not about supporting our news media here: the public broadcasters (ABC and SBS) dominate online and yet the proposed legislation deliberately excludes them from any claimed profiteering from Google. This is just the abandoning of any free market principles the Coalition claims to have to provide support for their domestic media wing, in the form a local protection racket. The claim of profiteering from search result listings, as you also imply above, is just not true. As one ex-News Ltd and Google-associated Twitter account has emphasised, Google delivers billions of free clicks to publishers and makes very little ad revenue around search results. [2] A good brief summary of the situation can be found from a local tech commentator, Justin Warren [3]. Two valuable points he makes: * big publishers are salty over failing to see classified ads would get destroyed by online * there are legitimate concerns with Google and Facebook, but they're largely orthogonal to any of this [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/government-declines-to-explain-foxtels-30m-handout-for-sports-broadcasting https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/gover... [2] https://twitter.com/neilwrites/status/1295200085152694272 https://twitter.com/neilwrites/status/1295200085152694272 [3] https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/08/17/draft-news-media-and-digital-platforms-laws/?utm_source=TW https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/08/17/draft-news-media-and-d...
- stephen_g 6y ago
  The $30 million was just last time. They got another $10 million this year [1]. Despite the fact that 75% of Australia doesn't subscribe to Foxtel and that SBS would be a better venue for sports content anyway... 1. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/22/coalition-gives-another-10m-to-foxtel-to-boost-womens-sport-on-tv https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/22/coali...
pb7 6y ago
>Google relies heavily on third-party content that they don't pay for in search results If you’re so confident that’s the case, then you support Google removing that content entirely from search, yes?

louissm_it 6y ago

But don’t third-party content providers rely just as much on Google as the inverse?

dannyr 6y ago

I mean it's a search engine so it should rely heavily on third-party content in its search results. Google links to these news sites in search results and drives traffic to them. If Google grabs significant parts of news articles that users don't need to visit the sites, then Google should pay them. But Google is not doing that.

RVuRnvbM2e 6y ago
> If Google grabs significant parts of news articles that users don't need to visit the sites, then Google should pay them. But Google is not doing that. So what is AMP then?
- shakna 6y ago
  The news site giving Google the article. As much as I dislike AMP... Google aren't the ones creating the AMP page.
  - RVuRnvbM2e 6y ago
    > While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp It's pretty blatantly the case that AMP provides a SEO boost. What hosting service could possibly compete with the speed at which Google can retrieve content from their _own_ servers? That's the whole point of this legislation: to give news orgs means to stop Google from twisting their arm in this way.
    - realmod 6y ago
      Literally ANY content delivery network would be able to compete with google. AMP sites are sites that the companies themselves build for google(could be any cdn) to just cache. The news organizations themselves gains a lot from google crawling and indexing their sites (which do cost google money) and now this legislation would also require google to pay them for displaying the title/subtitle of their articles. In what world is that fair or balancing out the relationship?
      - Spivak 6y ago
        > would also require google to pay them for displaying the title/subtitle of their articles. In what world is that fair or balancing out the relationship? This is not what the legislation is about. This is about Google's practice of excerpting the actual content of the articles and putting it at the top of the page. Google is algorithmically republishing copyrighted content from these news orgs and hoping that surrounding it in quotes is enough to protect them.
        sidibe 6y ago
        You are ignoring that whether the snippets are shown is already entirely up to the news orgs. In fact I think they're the ones that decide what's in the snippets
        brokenmachine 6y ago
        So the news sites can add a single "*" to their robots.txt. Problem solved.
    - shakna 6y ago
      > While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. That seems to say that is isn't blatantly the case that AMP provides an SEO boost. But that speed does. And there are many CDNs that are on the same edge. AMP isn't about to beat Akamai, for example.
romanovcode 6y ago
> But Google is not doing that. Google is doing that. Google is doing exactly that with AMP. Or with "in-page" results e.g. recent RapGenius lyrics scandal.
- pb7 6y ago
  >recent RapGenius lyrics scandal It got thrown out of court.

justsee 6y ago

Google isn't in the wrong here, and framing this as just an honest consumer-first regulator doing their job omits critical context to help people understand what's happening. The party in power federally is the Coalition, and they are deeply entwined, in a symbiotic relationship, with Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd: illustrated by endless editorial lines supportive of the Coalition in media across the country, revolving doors of Coalition advisors and News Ltd staff, through to regular questionable and controversial decisions in favour of News Ltd. A great example was Foxtel being given a $30 million grant with no process, documentation or explanation around it [1]. It was simply explained as 'media reform'. Like those 'media reforms', these proposed ones are also highly politically-driven and largely to the benefit of News Ltd. This is not about supporting our news media here: the public broadcasters (ABC and SBS) dominate online and yet the proposed legislation deliberately excludes them from any claimed profiteering from Google. This is just the abandoning of any free market principles the Coalition claims to have to provide support for their domestic media wing, in the form a local protection racket. The claim of profiteering from search result listings, as you also imply above, is just not true. As one ex-News Ltd and Google-associated Twitter account has emphasised, Google delivers billions of free clicks to publishers and makes very little ad revenue around search results. [2] A good brief summary of the situation can be found from a local tech commentator, Justin Warren [3]. Two valuable points he makes: * big publishers are salty over failing to see classified ads would get destroyed by online * there are legitimate concerns with Google and Facebook, but they're largely orthogonal to any of this [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/government-declines-to-explain-foxtels-30m-handout-for-sports-broadcasting https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/gover... [2] https://twitter.com/neilwrites/status/1295200085152694272 https://twitter.com/neilwrites/status/1295200085152694272 [3] https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/08/17/draft-news-media-and-digital-platforms-laws/?utm_source=TW https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/08/17/draft-news-media-and-d...

stephen_g 6y ago
The $30 million was just last time. They got another $10 million this year [1]. Despite the fact that 75% of Australia doesn't subscribe to Foxtel and that SBS would be a better venue for sports content anyway... 1. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/22/coalition-gives-another-10m-to-foxtel-to-boost-womens-sport-on-tv https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/22/coali...

pb7 6y ago

>Google relies heavily on third-party content that they don't pay for in search results If you’re so confident that’s the case, then you support Google removing that content entirely from search, yes?