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Or: newspapers opted into the Google + Facebook ecosystem because it was beneficial for them to do so, customers choose to use Google and Facebook because they
by natdempk 3y ago
Or: newspapers opted into the Google + Facebook ecosystem because it was beneficial for them to do so, customers choose to use Google and Facebook because they provide tangible user benefits, and competition is just a click away yet most newspapers fail to deliver a competitive value prop to visit/subscribe directly compared to the traffic they get from Google/Facebook. The reality is that the newspapers derive great value from Google/Facebook traffic (lets them get more ad money + subscribers) whereas the value of the newspapers to Google/Facebook is marginal as they are just more content in a feed/aggregator. There's no racket going on here just incentives/products/reality all around. If anything the Canadian government's asks are the real racket/shakedown.
I recommend reading this article from Stratechery if you want a more thorough breakdown of the incentives from when Australia tried to do something similar: https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargaining-code-breaking-down-the-code-australias-fake-news/ https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargainin...
- riku_iki 3y ago> and competition is just a click away yet most newspapers fail to deliver a competitive value prop there are many points where big tech abuses their monopolistic advantage making competition not fair.
- natdempk 3y agoI don't disagree there are some instances of this in other areas, but in the case of links to news websites I don't think there's a meaningful argument against customers choosing which URL to visit as it relates to competition.
- riku_iki 3y agofb+google have monopoly on links discovery, customers can't open news URL unless visit google or fb and watch all their ads and give them data.
- DocTomoe 3y agoHuh? What does prevent Joe User from typing in https://www.nytimes.com https://www.nytimes.com?
- riku_iki 3y agofiguring out exact "nytimes.com" address without using google, unless he has all 100M web sites in his memory somehow.
- DocTomoe 3y agoBuy a newspaper - the URL is right up there in the masthead. Alternatively there is guessing the domain, which is how we found our stuff back in the day.
- riku_iki 3y agosure, you can even have friends, and exchange paper letters talking about news, but 95% people use google, and that's why it is called monopoly.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoFortunately, these days if you guess wrong, the browser will just open you results of Google search for the string you just typed in (what used to be) the address bar.
- johnbellone 3y agoThe problem is with discoverability, i.e., knowing that you want to type "nytimes.com" instead of "theonion.com", or even "amazon.com". Most people start at a search engine with keywords because that's how we've trained them for the past 25 years.
- vkou 3y agoThat's bad behaviour against users, not bad behaviour against newspapers.
- vkou 3y agoThere are legitimate criticsms to be made about those practices, but which exact anti-competitive practices are employed by Google/Bing against newspapers, in particular?
- riku_iki 3y agoI guess taking title + text snippets from original authors, and monetizing them without consent. The question if it is anti-competitive is up to legislation, which looks like may change.