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I'm no fan of Google, but if it was me making the decision I would have told them to pack sand. Google is providing them with a service, not the other way aroun

I'm no fan of Google, but if it was me making the decision I would have told them to pack sand. Google is providing them with a service, not the other way around.

Ajay-p 3y ago
Agree completely. What's in it for Google? Will they really make that much more money providing news, versus just cutting Canada off?
- deskamess 3y ago
  They should not have settled. Probably ran the numbers and for ad+search revenue and noticed it was worth it for $100m. If/Maybe you are making 300m then it's okay to give up that 100 to keep 200. And who gets to distribute the revenue?
tharmas 3y ago
I'm not taking sides but the issue is Canadian content. Because both countries share the same language, but there is a huge mismatch in economic might, Canadian content finds it hard to compete with American content. Mexico doesn't have the same problem largely because of language.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Not sure why the miss match is a problem. If Canadian demand for Canadian media is too low to support it, why should that be the problem of Google.
udev 3y ago
What is the service? Indexing and aggregating news? This is commodity now. Do you find this more valuable than the act of actually researching, writing, editing, and publishing the articles themselves?
- wvenable 3y ago
  It's advertising. Google drives traffic to the articles. If Google stops linking to news articles, media companies would be the bigger losers than Google would be. Admittedly Google isn't Facebook -- it's value to users comes from indexing everything. This is probably why they accepted this deal. As a Canadian, I wish that they'd just gone ahead and blocked Canadian news.
  - chongli 3y ago
    There’s no way Google would have agreed to pay $100 million if they didn’t have good reason to believe they’d lose even more than that by not having news. It’s purely a cost of doing business thing, which is why I think the calculation is different for Meta. On Facebook there’s just so much content to fill the void that news isn’t such a big loss.
  - abdullahkhalids 3y ago
    > If Google stops linking to news articles, media companies would be the bigger losers than Google would be. Only on the margin. If all countries in the world simultaneously imposed this law, and google stopped linking all news articles world wide, then Google would be the bigger loser than media companies. It's important to acknowledge the problem: Google extracts more monetary value from the news industry ecosystem than the the value it creates. I am not entirely sure if forcing Google to pay that difference is the correct solution, or whether helping evil media companies in this way is the right thing to do, but the problem exists.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      > If all countries in the world simultaneously imposed this law, and google stopped linking all news articles world wide, then Google would be the bigger loser than media companies. Large media sites would perhaps benefit from that but in general I don't think that's the case. I get almost all my news from link aggregate sites like Hackernews and Reddit. If I didn't get news links from those sites, I'd end up consuming less news. Especially local news. > It's important to acknowledge the problem: Google extracts more monetary value from the news industry ecosystem than the the value it creates. I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that news just isn't that valuable anymore. The only reason it was as profitable at all was local monopolies on distribution. Craigslist did more to kill media profitability than Google could ever do. Now you just have a thousand media companies all writing an article on the same current event and trying to capture a few eye balls mostly from being linked to elsewhere.
pupppet 3y ago
I don’t see it as so one-sided. What is Google without anything to index?

I'm no fan of Google, but if it was me making the decision I would have told them to pack sand. Google is providing them with a service, not the other way around.

Ajay-p 3y ago

Agree completely. What's in it for Google? Will they really make that much more money providing news, versus just cutting Canada off?

deskamess 3y ago
They should not have settled. Probably ran the numbers and for ad+search revenue and noticed it was worth it for $100m. If/Maybe you are making 300m then it's okay to give up that 100 to keep 200. And who gets to distribute the revenue?

tharmas 3y ago

I'm not taking sides but the issue is Canadian content. Because both countries share the same language, but there is a huge mismatch in economic might, Canadian content finds it hard to compete with American content. Mexico doesn't have the same problem largely because of language.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
Not sure why the miss match is a problem. If Canadian demand for Canadian media is too low to support it, why should that be the problem of Google.

udev 3y ago

What is the service? Indexing and aggregating news? This is commodity now. Do you find this more valuable than the act of actually researching, writing, editing, and publishing the articles themselves?

wvenable 3y ago
It's advertising. Google drives traffic to the articles. If Google stops linking to news articles, media companies would be the bigger losers than Google would be. Admittedly Google isn't Facebook -- it's value to users comes from indexing everything. This is probably why they accepted this deal. As a Canadian, I wish that they'd just gone ahead and blocked Canadian news.
- chongli 3y ago
  There’s no way Google would have agreed to pay $100 million if they didn’t have good reason to believe they’d lose even more than that by not having news. It’s purely a cost of doing business thing, which is why I think the calculation is different for Meta. On Facebook there’s just so much content to fill the void that news isn’t such a big loss.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  > If Google stops linking to news articles, media companies would be the bigger losers than Google would be. Only on the margin. If all countries in the world simultaneously imposed this law, and google stopped linking all news articles world wide, then Google would be the bigger loser than media companies. It's important to acknowledge the problem: Google extracts more monetary value from the news industry ecosystem than the the value it creates. I am not entirely sure if forcing Google to pay that difference is the correct solution, or whether helping evil media companies in this way is the right thing to do, but the problem exists.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    > If all countries in the world simultaneously imposed this law, and google stopped linking all news articles world wide, then Google would be the bigger loser than media companies. Large media sites would perhaps benefit from that but in general I don't think that's the case. I get almost all my news from link aggregate sites like Hackernews and Reddit. If I didn't get news links from those sites, I'd end up consuming less news. Especially local news. > It's important to acknowledge the problem: Google extracts more monetary value from the news industry ecosystem than the the value it creates. I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that news just isn't that valuable anymore. The only reason it was as profitable at all was local monopolies on distribution. Craigslist did more to kill media profitability than Google could ever do. Now you just have a thousand media companies all writing an article on the same current event and trying to capture a few eye balls mostly from being linked to elsewhere.

pupppet 3y ago

I don’t see it as so one-sided. What is Google without anything to index?