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Response to Google open letter

accc.gov.au

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Re: Response to Google open letter

#101

Post by shard972 »

kevincox wrote: post #91
infinkaramazov wrote: post #82

I'm Australian, and I created an account just to comment on this issue. Imagine Google News or the Facebook news feed were normal news websites. If you count their traffic as the amount of times people went to those websites just to read news, their raw traffic would dwarf any other news website in Australia by an order of magnitude. Journalistic websites have editorial standards, and at least some relationship and c…

For Google at least they have the option to opt-out. They can add a robots.txt file to prevent indexing. It isn't clear to me why special legislation is required to give the media companies bargaining power. They already have the power to say no if they don't think the arrangement is fair. (For facebook it is less clear, because you can't really force people to stop sharing your links)

Collective Bargaining

Re: Response to Google open letter

#102

Post by renaicirc »

clouddrover wrote: post #89
renaicirc wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

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?

Re: Response to Google open letter

#103

Post by clouddrover »

throwaways885 wrote: post #100
clouddrover wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe news isn't sustainable in the long run anyway. Independent journalists (who CAN survive on 50k-150k in ad revenue) are the future.

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.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#104

Post by clouddrover »

renaicirc wrote: post #102
clouddrover wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

It's not "belief", it's financial reality.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#105

Post by Tuna-Fish »

borland wrote: post #51
rsa25519 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Google actually made either of these claims in their letter. Agreed. And because this ACCC response doesn't link to the letter, I think these rebuttals to non-existent claims are deceptively misleading

The google letter makes non-existent claims that aren't part of the proposed law. Like that youtube and google will somehow magically offer worse results. They can offer the exact same results they do now - they might just have to pay for it. "If we had to pay more for news content, we would probably just cut it out because we don't want to pay - thus leading to worse results" doesn't quite have the same ring, does i…

> they might just have to pay for it. "If we had to pay more for news content, we would probably just cut it out because we don't want to pay - thus leading to worse results" doesn't quite have the same ring, does it :-)

The amount they'd have to pay for it seems to be dramatically more than what they make for it, so "if this law passes, we will stop serving these results" seems to be a reasonable reaction.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#106

Post by stephen_g »

clouddrover wrote: post #56
nl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading the defenses here in HN, I have become personally partial to conspiracy theories that too many paid commenters are among the crowd here. What do you mean? It's a ridiculous, arbitrary money grab used to fund old the old media mates of politicians. See Mike Cannon Brooke's (as someone who most definitely isn't getting paid by Google) thread to see how insane the rules are: https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/…

It's about funding journalism. What's Mike Cannon-Brooke's solution for funding journalism?

Are you Australian? Because I'd be a little surprised if you'd be saying that if you had a lot of exposure to our media.. Especially given the quality (or lack thereof) of our mainstream "news" sources, and the fact that this specifically cuts out ABC, SBS or most independent sources...

70% of the commercial media here is controlled by one American company, and perhaps not coincidentally they have a very close relationship with the Government. The Government has literally just given their cable network $40 million dollars over the last few budgets, completely un-tendered and without any reporting requirements or anything, to "help advance women's sport" - even though 75% of Australians aren't subscribers and SBS would be a better venue for such content...

Re: Response to Google open letter

#107

Post by justsee »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #20

Google is totally in the wrong here, and ACCC is doing its usual good work of protecting the Aussie consumer. It's interesting to watch Google try to squirm out of this though - they probably see it for the precedent it is. Google relies heavily on third-party content that they don't pay for in search results. If this law forces them to negotiate payment for that practice then I'm all for it.

Google isn't in the wrong here, and framing this as just an honest consumer-first regulator doing their job omits critical context to help people understand what's happening.

The party in power federally is the Coalition, and they are deeply entwined, in a symbiotic relationship, with Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd: illustrated by endless editorial lines supportive of the Coalition in media across the country, revolving doors of Coalition advisors and News Ltd staff, through to regular questionable and controversial decisions in favour of News Ltd.

A great example was Foxtel being given a $30 million grant with no process, documentation or explanation around it [1]. It was simply explained as 'media reform'.

Like those 'media reforms', these proposed ones are also highly politically-driven and largely to the benefit of News Ltd.

This is not about supporting our news media here: the public broadcasters (ABC and SBS) dominate online and yet the proposed legislation deliberately excludes them from any claimed profiteering from Google.

This is just the abandoning of any free market principles the Coalition claims to have to provide support for their domestic media wing, in the form a local protection racket.

The claim of profiteering from search result listings, as you also imply above, is just not true.

As one ex-News Ltd and Google-associated Twitter account has emphasised, Google delivers billions of free clicks to publishers and makes very little ad revenue around search results. [2]

A good brief summary of the situation can be found from a local tech commentator, Justin Warren [3]. Two valuable points he makes:

* big publishers are salty over failing to see classified ads would get destroyed by online

* there are legitimate concerns with Google and Facebook, but they're largely orthogonal to any of this

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/19/gover...

[2] https://twitter.com/neilwrites/status/1295200085152694272

[3] https://www.eigenmagic.com/2020/08/17/draft-news-media-and-d...

Re: Response to Google open letter

#108

Post by mrep »

Krisando wrote: post #99
fungi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How about we simply ban Google and Facebook from reproducing news on their own site? News Corp is and always has been free to not have its content on Google ( https://www.robotstxt.org/ ). But that's not what they want, they want a Money just for appearing in search results. Seems more like a rent seeking for News Corp. > We're bending over backwards to try and accommodate Google The funny/bizzare bit is we are ben…

re: bananaface > I don't like the news media but they can't just "not appear" on Google's results. Google has way more leverage than them. Their choices are: accept Google stealing your content and giving you some traffic in return, or die. It's like saying, "you're free not to farm on your feudal overlord's land." Where else are you going to go? > > The problem isn't a matter of rights, it's that Google has too much…

Stealing your content? A quick google search for "Australia news law" shows a top stories box with just a headline and a thumbnail. Similar thing with the news tab adds but it adds on about another 20 words from the first paragraph. Which part of that would you prefer them not to show?

Also, I did not see a single ad on either of those pages nor can I recall ever seeing ads when I was looking for news on google. The only money they are probably even making from news is when they send you to a news website that happens to use googles ad services and that's a symbiotic relationship. Even with collective bargaining, I cannot see this going any other way than how it did in germany or spain with either no fee or just delisting all news.

Re: Response to Google open letter

#109

Post by ggrrhh_ta »

RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #65
zmmmmm wrote: post #40

This is a very disappointing response from the ACCC. It seems to be extremely misleading in its own right. > Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services Google did not state this. The ACCC - the supposed detached "fair" regulator, in charge of creating this code, just made something up to suit their own ends. > Google will not be required to share any additional user data with A…

> > Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services > Google did not state this. Google did say that this legislation would: > put the free services you use at risk in Australia. That's implying that either the services would go, or they would no longer be free.

Yes, that's the cover blackmailing "accept our new terms, you are free to terminate..."

Re: Response to Google open letter

#110

Post by clouddrover »

stephen_g wrote: post #106
clouddrover wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about funding journalism. What's Mike Cannon-Brooke's solution for funding journalism?

Are you Australian? Because I'd be a little surprised if you'd be saying that if you had a lot of exposure to our media.. Especially given the quality (or lack thereof) of our mainstream "news" sources, and the fact that this specifically cuts out ABC, SBS or most independent sources... 70% of the commercial media here is controlled by one American company, and perhaps not coincidentally they have a very close relati…

> Because I'd be a little surprised if you'd be saying that given the quality of our mainstream "news" sources

So your solution is to make them even worse by letting Google bleed them dry?

What percentage of Australian's news reading goes through Google? What percentage of Australia's advertising spend does Google command?

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