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France rules Google must pay news firms for content

reuters.com

171–180 of 203 posts

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite. The core idea of anti-discrimination law is simple: Treat people the same where they are the same and treat people different where they are different. Here the example of the rough sleeping tax applying equally to the homeless and those with homes is often used to illustrate latter.

Discrimination means recognizing the difference between things. You're insisting that discrimination is required to be non-discriminatory.

> You're insisting that discrimination is required to be non-discriminatory.

Because parsing this sentence threw me for a loop, I'll note that I think you mean "you're insisting that, in order to be non-discriminatory, discrimination is required" rather than "you're insisting that there is a requirement imposed on discrimination, to wit, that it must be non-discriminatory".

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#172

The actual PDF of the decision is there: https://www.autoritedelaconcurrence.fr/sites/default/files/i... The arguments are: - Press freedom is a fundamental right - The press is not in its best state right now in France, so hitting them (for example, removing them from the search result from Google, which is in a monopoly position) is dangerous for the press freedom - Google did not try to negotiate a fair price for…

[deleted]

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If those French citizens don't voluntarily establish a TCP/IP connection to google.com, they will have no dealings with Google. (Well, that's not entirely true, but it is an entirely separate debate.) If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days. You don't want to go down this path, bel…

I can initiate a connection to any computer on the internet. Are they forced to reply? No. Are they forced to serve french consumers? No. Same logic applies to things like ad blocking. Publishers send me their content free of charge and then complain when I refuse to "pay" by looking at the noise. They should have returned HTTP 402 Payment Required instead.

There's a big difference between forcing them to reply, and forcing them not to.

Google News doesn't come looking for you, you have to go looking for it. Analogies to unsolicited advertising are not applicable.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If those French citizens don't voluntarily establish a TCP/IP connection to google.com, they will have no dealings with Google. (Well, that's not entirely true, but it is an entirely separate debate.) If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days. You don't want to go down this path, bel…

>If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days. This isn't a gang war for turf, France does not "have a beef" with Google. They have made laws for their country, and are enforcing those laws. Google has the freedom to comply or GTFO, simple as that.

Mountain View, California is already a long way TFO of France.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#176
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lucky then that you are literally wrong. Neither FB nor Google are selling your data to anyone.

Selling targeting information about me is a form of “selling my data”. Out of $160b in revenue in 2019, $134b of Google’s revenue came from ads. Most of the ad revenue is in the form of targeted ads, so if they stopped selling people’s information, they’d immediately go under. Similar numbers apply to Facebook. I honestly don’t understand where this argument that those companies don’t sell people’s information comes…

Both Google and FB are ad distributors so the data they have is their gold. They would never hand out csv or database dumps to anyone as that would potentially give their competition an advantage. There are companies where you can buy email lists or other information about certain demographics, but that's not Google or Facebook's business.

That's why people say Google or FB sell data.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the French government has a beef with anyone, it's with their own people, who stubbornly refuse to use Videotex or whatever the homegrown French alternative is these days. This isn't a gang war for turf, France does not "have a beef" with Google. They have made laws for their country, and are enforcing those laws. Google has the freedom to comply or GTFO, simple as that.

Mountain View, California is already a long way TFO of France.

Just like online/offshore gambling is way outside the US, but the US still rerouted planes with gambling CEOs so they could be arrested.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#178
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mountain View, California is already a long way TFO of France.

Just like online/offshore gambling is way outside the US, but the US still rerouted planes with gambling CEOs so they could be arrested.

Correct, and there was nothing OK about that, either.

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#179
What happens if you make cost an inverse ranking factor?

Structure your ranking algorithm to allocate a proportionate share of traffic to french news sites, given relevancy to a query topic, and rank order publishers by negotiated cost?

Given there is SUBSTANTIAL value in a news publisher being sent traffic, in terms of advertising and circulation, the power law in search engine clicks should keep cost paid to a bare minimum.

Unless the French are going full dystopia and picking the winners within their own markets?

Re: France rules Google must pay news firms for content

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact google search is a monopoly Except it's not. I never use Google, I use DuckDuckGo. If DDG fails I try Bing. I have google and facebook domains blocked from access in my system because I don't like their tracking. Lots of other people search without Google. Google is simply not a monopoly in the search game.

Google has over 90% of search market share in Europe. The statement that Google is a monopoly isn't really debatable. And the fact that you can use another search engine doesn't change the power Google has, because everyone else uses Google. So your website has to play by Google's rules if you want to be found.

> The statement that Google is a monopoly isn't really debatable.

OK, let's not debate. We'll just agree that the statement is empirically false.

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