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Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

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Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#21

Post by PoignardAzur »

bensecure wrote: post #10
KingLancelot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries are now extorting American tech companies, that’s what’s really going on here.

If you're doing business in a country, naturally you need to deal with the regulatory environment of that country. Its surprising to see such explicit american chauvinism when discussing this issue.

I'm as much against american hegemony as the next frenchman, and I still consider this wave of "we'll make google pay for the traffic they send our way" regulations to be bullshit.

It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#23

Post by polishdude20 »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #21
bensecure wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing business in a country, naturally you need to deal with the regulatory environment of that country. Its surprising to see such explicit american chauvinism when discussing this issue.

I'm as much against american hegemony as the next frenchman, and I still consider this wave of "we'll make google pay for the traffic they send our way" regulations to be bullshit. It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.

I'm just disappointed that it seems the only way our government can make money is by pulling it from American companies.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#24

Post by bensecure »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #21
bensecure wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're doing business in a country, naturally you need to deal with the regulatory environment of that country. Its surprising to see such explicit american chauvinism when discussing this issue.

I'm as much against american hegemony as the next frenchman, and I still consider this wave of "we'll make google pay for the traffic they send our way" regulations to be bullshit. It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.

> It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.

That's utter nonsense. If google is sending traffic to a site, then naturally they consider that site valuable in some way. Nothing about google makes news "obsolete", and in fact google is basically just a website for finding news articles (and other content). The Canadian implementation of this law, unlike the Australian one for example, gives google the option of excluding these news sites from search results entirely if they consider them unnecessary. That google has chosen to negotiate a deal instead demonstrates that google recognizes the value these sites provide.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#25

Post by chongli »

wvenable wrote: post #15
udev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#26

Post by abdullahkhalids »

wvenable wrote: post #15
udev wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

> 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.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#27

Post by wvenable »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #26
wvenable wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#28

Post by ulrashida »

wvenable wrote: post #27
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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 consumi…

Some news isn't valuable anymore. In the world we're going towards, wouldn't it be fair to expect that reliable/verified news will increase in value? Similarly, what is the true value of local news that would otherwise go unreported?

It's important to consider what someone would pay for news directly alongside the value that a healthy media ecosystem plays in a healthy society. It's not called the fourth estate because someone thought it would be fun.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#29

Post by wvenable »

ulrashida wrote: post #28
wvenable wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 consumi…

Some news isn't valuable anymore. In the world we're going towards, wouldn't it be fair to expect that reliable/verified news will increase in value? Similarly, what is the true value of local news that would otherwise go unreported? It's important to consider what someone would pay for news directly alongside the value that a healthy media ecosystem plays in a healthy society. It's not called the fourth estate becau…

Whether I agree or disagree this doesn't have anything to do with governments legislating that Google pay the largest media companies some money for linking. I absolutely see value in a healthy media system but massive companies owned by billionaires paying each other would not fit that definition for me.

Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

#30

Post by pupppet »

ratsmack wrote: post #5

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.

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