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I'm not fully understanding the Australian media's issue with Google. Google shows links or a small snippet of news articles, a user may decide hey I want to r

I'm not fully understanding the Australian media's issue with Google. Google shows links or a small snippet of news articles, a user may decide hey I want to read that and clicks the link and goes to the media outlets website to read more. This is driving traffic to media websites? If it wasn't for Google surfacing the content, unless the user was a daily reader of that specific media outlet that user would never of visited that media outlet to view the article. I get it if one media outlet is ranked higher than another media outlet that can/may be unfair and some transparency on how news search results are ranked may help, it may also do the reverse if you no the rank algorithm you can game it. I'm not sure how making Google pay to show a link to a news story helps though other than Murdoch trying to prop up there news properties that look to have reduced readership. Have I missed anything or miss-understood the problem?

verdverm 6y ago
It is a bad precedent to allow governments the power to decide which speech should be heard.
- LIV2 6y ago
  The Australian government already has that power since we have no bill of rights and no free speech
- robin21 6y ago
  It's a great point. At present there is always the opportunity for another search engine to come along and take search traffic from google. Thinking in the time frame of 50 years I would guess that Google's monopoly will erode eventually. We shouldn't create precedents that could impact future competition.
afavour 6y ago
> Google shows links or a small snippet of news articles, a user may decide hey I want to read that and clicks the link and goes to the media outlets website to read more. This is driving traffic to media websites? That is how it would work if Google presented simple search results, like they always have. But their snippets are different: they try to extract an answer to the users actual query. So if they’re doing their job correctly the user actually won’t visit the site, because they will have been given all they need by Google. I’m undecided about whether this law is actually a good idea, but I can see the point. A contrived example: I want wonder “how much damage was caused by last week’s hurricane?”. A newspaper might have assigned a reporter to covering the hurricane, and they’d call up various local authorities that can estimate this kind of thing, then write an article containing that info. All salaried work that cost money. Along comes Google, grabs the relevant paragraph, and shows it on my search results page. No need for me to click, no money goes to the newspaper.
robin21 6y ago
If every news outlet told google to remove their articles or pay them then google would have to weigh up the ad loss from people no longer searching for news on their platform and potentially moving to another search platform. This is what the free market offers. However Google's monopoly position makes this challenging. There is also the regulatory route where the will of the people demand change. In France such an agreement was just signed: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/google-inks-agreement-in-france-on-paying-publishers-for-news-reuse/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/google-inks-agreement-in-f... I'm not clear on the specifics but it seems clear thst Google is on a PR campaign to avoid impact to their profits worldwide from such moves.

verdverm 6y ago

It is a bad precedent to allow governments the power to decide which speech should be heard.

LIV2 6y ago
The Australian government already has that power since we have no bill of rights and no free speech
robin21 6y ago
It's a great point. At present there is always the opportunity for another search engine to come along and take search traffic from google. Thinking in the time frame of 50 years I would guess that Google's monopoly will erode eventually. We shouldn't create precedents that could impact future competition.

afavour 6y ago

> Google shows links or a small snippet of news articles, a user may decide hey I want to read that and clicks the link and goes to the media outlets website to read more. This is driving traffic to media websites? That is how it would work if Google presented simple search results, like they always have. But their snippets are different: they try to extract an answer to the users actual query. So if they’re doing their job correctly the user actually won’t visit the site, because they will have been given all they need by Google. I’m undecided about whether this law is actually a good idea, but I can see the point. A contrived example: I want wonder “how much damage was caused by last week’s hurricane?”. A newspaper might have assigned a reporter to covering the hurricane, and they’d call up various local authorities that can estimate this kind of thing, then write an article containing that info. All salaried work that cost money. Along comes Google, grabs the relevant paragraph, and shows it on my search results page. No need for me to click, no money goes to the newspaper.

robin21 6y ago

If every news outlet told google to remove their articles or pay them then google would have to weigh up the ad loss from people no longer searching for news on their platform and potentially moving to another search platform. This is what the free market offers. However Google's monopoly position makes this challenging. There is also the regulatory route where the will of the people demand change. In France such an agreement was just signed: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/google-inks-agreement-in-france-on-paying-publishers-for-news-reuse/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/google-inks-agreement-in-f... I'm not clear on the specifics but it seems clear thst Google is on a PR campaign to avoid impact to their profits worldwide from such moves.