5 ms·

I'm sorry, but funding media giants is obviously not a good reason to extort search giants. What is the nuance that I am missing?

clouddrover 6y ago
Google gets content and advertising revenue, journalists are not getting enough return for their work. It's not sustainable.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  Maybe news isn't sustainable in the long run anyway. Independent journalists (who CAN survive on 50k-150k in ad revenue) are the future.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    How? They'll be crushed like bugs by the first lawsuit that comes along. The only way they'd survive is by producing fawning, uncritical reports, like almost every interview done with movie stars.
    - throwaway45349 6y ago
      As long as the courts are fair, there's no problem here.
      - clouddrover 6y ago
        Lawsuits cost money. There's nothing but problems here. You're asking them to go bankrupt.
- renaicirc 6y ago
  If they believe that Google should compensate them then they can already demand that Google stop linking their pages, and then bargain with Google the ordinary way. Why is it fair or necessary to add extra laws here?
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    It's not "belief", it's financial reality.
  - rossjudson 6y ago
    There's no "demand" necessary. Just configuration. Lots of interesting things on Robots meta tag: https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_t...
- jddj 6y ago
  The journalists doing good work would be almost entirely excluded by this law. This money would go to an organisation which largely peddles outrage and division.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    > This money would go to an organisation which largely peddles outrage and division. Frankly that's Google, Facebook, and Twitter. They are aimed at maximising engagement and outrage does that for them. They keep feeding people what they think they want to see and the further down the rabbit hole they go the weirder and more extreme it gets.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      > Frankly that's Google, Facebook, and Twitter. They are aimed at maximising engagement and outrage does that for them. Please, do a google image search for "daily telegraph cover", and then give me your description of the Murdoch news media.
- visarga 6y ago
  I don't think Google News displays ads on result pages, just the title + thumbnail. Why should they pay for displaying these links when they don't earn anything on them, it doesn't make business sense. As for news discovered by regular search, I think that is different because the user has to input specific search keywords and restrict to recent results. The difference is about intention and recurring visits. The situation seems similar to the Google Books fiasco, where we didn't end up with a searchable online library of out of print books. Lots of arguments were raised back then as now, but the bottom line was that everyone tried to do good for himself and we all got less - the prisoner's dilemma in action.
  - clouddrover 6y ago
    > it doesn't make business sense If it didn't make business sense then Google wouldn't be showing them in the first place. It plainly does make business sense. Google shouldn't be afraid to pay for what it uses.
    - brokenmachine 6y ago
      If the news sites do not want the traffic, they are perfectly free to use their robots.txt to stop google from scraping. The want to have their cake and eat it too, plus get paid for the privilege. Having said this, I have no sympathy for Google either.
      - clouddrover 6y ago
        They aren't perfectly free to do it and that's the point. Read what the ACCC is doing and why it is doing it: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-to-negotiate-payment-with-major-digital-platforms https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...
        brokenmachine 6y ago
        Nothing in that link that I can see prevents the news businesses from excluding themselves from being scraped by google using robots.txt. Well, nothing except for the fact that their own sites are not compelling enough for customers in order to be profitable, so they don't want to do it.
brokenmachine 6y ago
You're not missing anything and there's no nuance. It's a blatant moneygrab for fossils from a government they have by the balls. The classified ads have dried up and they're out of ideas.

clouddrover 6y ago

Google gets content and advertising revenue, journalists are not getting enough return for their work. It's not sustainable.

throwaways885 6y ago
Maybe news isn't sustainable in the long run anyway. Independent journalists (who CAN survive on 50k-150k in ad revenue) are the future.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  How? They'll be crushed like bugs by the first lawsuit that comes along. The only way they'd survive is by producing fawning, uncritical reports, like almost every interview done with movie stars.
  - throwaway45349 6y ago
    As long as the courts are fair, there's no problem here.
    - clouddrover 6y ago
      Lawsuits cost money. There's nothing but problems here. You're asking them to go bankrupt.
renaicirc 6y ago
If they believe that Google should compensate them then they can already demand that Google stop linking their pages, and then bargain with Google the ordinary way. Why is it fair or necessary to add extra laws here?
- clouddrover 6y ago
  It's not "belief", it's financial reality.
- rossjudson 6y ago
  There's no "demand" necessary. Just configuration. Lots of interesting things on Robots meta tag: https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_tag https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_t...
jddj 6y ago
The journalists doing good work would be almost entirely excluded by this law. This money would go to an organisation which largely peddles outrage and division.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > This money would go to an organisation which largely peddles outrage and division. Frankly that's Google, Facebook, and Twitter. They are aimed at maximising engagement and outrage does that for them. They keep feeding people what they think they want to see and the further down the rabbit hole they go the weirder and more extreme it gets.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    > Frankly that's Google, Facebook, and Twitter. They are aimed at maximising engagement and outrage does that for them. Please, do a google image search for "daily telegraph cover", and then give me your description of the Murdoch news media.
visarga 6y ago
I don't think Google News displays ads on result pages, just the title + thumbnail. Why should they pay for displaying these links when they don't earn anything on them, it doesn't make business sense. As for news discovered by regular search, I think that is different because the user has to input specific search keywords and restrict to recent results. The difference is about intention and recurring visits. The situation seems similar to the Google Books fiasco, where we didn't end up with a searchable online library of out of print books. Lots of arguments were raised back then as now, but the bottom line was that everyone tried to do good for himself and we all got less - the prisoner's dilemma in action.
- clouddrover 6y ago
  > it doesn't make business sense If it didn't make business sense then Google wouldn't be showing them in the first place. It plainly does make business sense. Google shouldn't be afraid to pay for what it uses.
  - brokenmachine 6y ago
    If the news sites do not want the traffic, they are perfectly free to use their robots.txt to stop google from scraping. The want to have their cake and eat it too, plus get paid for the privilege. Having said this, I have no sympathy for Google either.
    - clouddrover 6y ago
      They aren't perfectly free to do it and that's the point. Read what the ACCC is doing and why it is doing it: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-to-negotiate-payment-with-major-digital-platforms https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...
      - brokenmachine 6y ago
        Nothing in that link that I can see prevents the news businesses from excluding themselves from being scraped by google using robots.txt. Well, nothing except for the fact that their own sites are not compelling enough for customers in order to be profitable, so they don't want to do it.

brokenmachine 6y ago

You're not missing anything and there's no nuance. It's a blatant moneygrab for fossils from a government they have by the balls. The classified ads have dried up and they're out of ideas.