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Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

ctvnews.ca

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Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#121

Post by tsunamifury »

monsieurgaufre wrote: post #53

Disclaimer: Am Canadian. The way i see it, it's a clear case of "we tried nothing and we're out of ideas" on BOTH sides. The canadian medias are boring and are mostly opinions and a few Reuters/AFP articles. On the other hand, GOOG and Meta are not even acknowledging that they're trying to bully nations around while providing a slowly worse service as time goes by and profiteering from work they acquire for free. I d…

Canadian citizens are completely free to type a url into a bar and visit a newspaper

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#122

Post by rektide »

monsieurgaufre wrote: post #97
jupp0r wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem. News outlets can now negotiate individually with Google if they still want the free traffic. Google will be paying $0 to them. Other outlets who don't want the free traffic from Google can choose to not receive it, as they can right now via robots.txt.

Traffic is generated by the content which is not free (most of the time) to produce. Google without content is what except an empty library? I'm not sure why people here are defending GOOG so much.

It depends on whether you consider a headline and part of a sentance the content or not, I I guess.

It sure doesn't seem to me like creating a link & giving people an extremely concise blurb that hopefully entices them to follow it is the content. As an individual I expect to be able to cite things in the world and to tell people how they can read it too. Legislating that basic right away feels like madness.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#123

Post by carlosjobim »

pipo234 wrote: post #66
carlosjobim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I search for something I want the best results for the query, and sometimes those are behind a paywall.

I'd pay a little if we could get rid of the pop ups and cookie banners, advertisements and click bait content. But after 30 years we're still missing the infrastructure for micro payments. For news sites and netflix we now have subscriptions shielded by paywals, which really is incompatible with hyperlinked sites or search engines. Even if you subscribed to 1000 services, the experience would probably be horrible. Th…

> But after 30 years we're still missing the infrastructure for micro payments.

Sad but true. The closest we have to a solution right now is PressReader, which is just too expensive in my opinion at $30 per month.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#124

Post by pyrale »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #117
pyrale wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. It's not just a matter of the targeted companies being Google and Meta, even though these two especially deserve it. It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't u…

Don't want people gazing on your property? Erect a fence. Nothing prevents media sites from implementing access controls to only allow paying customers.

That's a classic case of prisoner's dilemma though.

By acting at national level, news publishers (partially) avoid that dilemma.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#125

Post by AlanYx »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #73

Is there really anything new in this post from the news that came out last week?

Last week it was Facebook. Today it's Google too. And the impact is arguably more significant given that Google is delisting Canadian news from their core search engine (not just from news.google.com), which has 92% market share in Canada.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#126

Post by chongli »

akira2501 wrote: post #104
bdw5204 wrote: post #32

The solution to this problem is for Google, Facebook and other web sites that link to news to limit links to web sites that agree that the free traffic they're receiving from extremely popular web sites is sufficient compensation for linking to them. In other words, block links to any web site that feels entitled to be paid for being linked to. There are plenty of web sites that will be happy to take the free traffic…

> to limit links to web sites that agree that the free traffic they're receiving from extremely popular web sites is sufficient compensation for linking to them. The problem with this is there's no direct relationship between the two. So Google and Facebook can arbitrarily decide to "punish" a paper by demoting or flat out filtering their content. These platforms aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.…

The news sites in Canada are owned by billion dollar media and telecom companies. Nowhere near the scale of Google & Facebook, but among the largest companies in Canada. Speaking as a Canadian, this is very much a protectionist law trying to prop up an old media business the public no longer has much interest in.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#127

Post by pyrale »

duringmath wrote: post #94
pyrale wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. It's not just a matter of the targeted companies being Google and Meta, even though these two especially deserve it. It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't u…

There's no imbalance here: newspapers produce content, search engines/social networks surface and link to it. What's happening here is that publishers and their owners somehow figured these pesky internet wiz kids owe them more money.

> There's no imbalance here: newspapers produce content, search engines/social networks surface and link to it.

As evidenced by the average RoI at Google compared to news organisations.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#128

Post by monsieurgaufre »

throwawaycad11 wrote: post #111
monsieurgaufre wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic is generated by the content which is not free (most of the time) to produce. Google without content is what except an empty library? I'm not sure why people here are defending GOOG so much.

Canadian here as well. Your assumption that traffic is generated by content (alone) is incorrect. Google is certainly profiting, but the news publisher will struggle to find readers without Google. It's a symbiotic relationship, but Google is doing the REAL work. If you don't believe that, build your own website and try to get people to read your content. Believe me, content doesn't matter as much as reach. If you wa…

I already go directly to the websites. Have always done that.

I subscribe for a specialized publication that offers free articles because i find the publication useful.

I might be dumb but i can't understand how content matters less than reach. Without content, reach is useless. (and without reach, content is mostly useless as well..)

My take is that both are things of the past and using legal ways to fight for relevancy, each for different reasons. I don't have a horse in this race.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#129

Post by seanmcdirmid »

randcraw wrote: post #37
anderspitman wrote: post #33

The web may never be better than it was about 5 years ago, and that makes me very sad

Make that 25 years ago, before the FAANGs came out.

I'm not going back to using Alta Vista, no thanks.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#130

Post by chongli »

shadowgovt wrote: post #106
randcraw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make that 25 years ago, before the FAANGs came out.

N'ah, I remember that era. Search engines were basically worthless. Google was the first one to get the formula right. Before Google, search engines were basically just doing keyword matching and so you'd have the issue that every search for a programming topic landed you on expertsexchange. Google was the first to start leveraging click-away signal, and they were able to successfully down-sample keyword-farmers like…

Search engines were bad in the 90's, but the web was much smaller and community-driven. Most of the websites people visited were created by individuals and people linked to each other to form web rings.
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