Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets • Hacker News Board

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#241

Post by izacus » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:42 PM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #227

izacus wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair they were just playing the game Google asked them to play. This outright BS. Noone asked them to fill their sites with popup videos, popup ads, spam and other garbage. Noone asked them to spam people with notifications in iOS either and Google didn't force them to do that either. Stop blaming Google for the deep rot within the news industry, they did it to themselves.

Sure they did. They created page and site metrics that then tied to search engine placement. All the "garbage" is an effort to improve their "performance" within these specific metric categories. It's the same story with "AMP." Publishers had zero incentive to create AMP versions of their site, but they did anyways, because they saw that they lost placement if they didn't comply. I'm not "blaming" Google, nor should…

AMP was deliberately created to mitigate the horrible website experience of news publishers.

You're crafting a false narrative of poor news media being forced to dig their own grave by someone else, when that is not even remotely true. They've been cost cutting and compromising themselves way before some evil tech corporation came to them.

There's really no industry that deserves this kind of history repainting less than the media moguls.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#242

Post by makeitdouble » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:45 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #226

babypuncher wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just plain hyperlinks, I would agree with you. Google is scraping metadata and articles, and summarizing them so that most people never even need to click the link. Google is getting most of the value from the articles written while not doing the actual work to make them. The whole thing could have been avoided if Google and social media stopped embedding previews and summaries everywhere. It's worse in pla…

I don't think the law (from what I read of it) actually does target that though. Might as well cite it rather than refer to it in the abstract: > The total number of the covered platform’s internet web pages displayed or presented to California residents during the month that link to, display, or present the eligible digital journalism provider’s news articles, works of journalism, or other content, or portions there…

From the article, the overall point seems to be on Google making significantly more money from news than the news providers, and the providers trying to find a better balance one way or another.

I think you're right on raw links also part of the target, but it's also in the context of Google providing an overview of the news and profiting from it, whether the links are clicked or not (Google's clearly covering all the spectrum of where money can be made on the pipeline, until it hits the target site)

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#243

Post by bevekspldnw » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:45 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #219

bevekspldnw wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has thoroughly rigged the space, including manipulating bid stream data to underpay publishers while overcharging the advertiser. It’s called Project Bernake which is public now. I have it on reliable sources there is a lot more beyond that. The search antitrust suit was garbage, but the coming trials in the ad auction suit is going to hurt a lot more. They total lost their way, it’s actually insane when you’l…

> Google has thoroughly rigged the space, including manipulating bid stream data to underpay publishers while overcharging the advertiser That seems an argument for news publishers rolling their own, not against. What you are allegeding is nasty, but it should also make it easier to build a coompeting service not harder.

I’m not alleging anything, this is internal stuff that came out.

It’s impossible to roll your own for a very long list of reasons that go back to the late 90s.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#244

Post by bevekspldnw » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:46 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #188

bevekspldnw wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has thoroughly rigged the space, including manipulating bid stream data to underpay publishers while overcharging the advertiser. It’s called Project Bernake which is public now. I have it on reliable sources there is a lot more beyond that. The search antitrust suit was garbage, but the coming trials in the ad auction suit is going to hurt a lot more. They total lost their way, it’s actually insane when you’l…

All of what you write is in support of the parent post suggestion "why don’t publishers stop using doubleclick and build their own?" - the larger margin Google is taking (no matter how) between advertisers and publishers, the better deal publishers can offer when telling advertisers "come to our platform directly and get the same ad placements much cheaper"..

Scale.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#245

Post by CivBase » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:48 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #135

burnte wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree with it too. Google and Facebook aren't the reason news outlets have cash problems and a free teat to latch on to isn't the answer. News is important, but let's fix the problem in a better way.

What is the problem with news? Why aren't people willing to pay for it?

Many people are willing to pay for news. Enough that it will keep coming in excess. Just not enough to sustain the scale and production values of yesteryear.

Plenty of independent journalists are out there doing just fine and even some of the big outlets have adjusted effectively. But in the internet age we don't need hundreds of outlets all reporting on the same stories 24/7 - especially when most of those stories have no impact on the viewers/readers.

The market is simply adjusting and the old establishment is going down kicking and screaming.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#246

Post by makeitdouble » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:49 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #218

bawolff wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair - that's what news sites do - they summarize information happening elsewhere. Its hard to claim google is in the wrong for doing to news sites what news sites have been doing to other people since forever.

If Google was doing what news sites did, it would have journalists writing articles, researching data, investigating, etc. Yet they do none of that . Your statement is absurd.

I kinda wonder at what point would Google enter the field by sucking AFP's feed, auto filtering it and AI generate articles.

Yahoo News wasn't that, but a search engine getting into the news business would not be unprecedented.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#247

Post by wustangdan » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:49 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #178

zmmmmm wrote: post #170

I have sympathy for news publishers but I worry a lot about the principle of asserting that linking to something is an act that the link target has proprietary rights to over. At some level, it is almost a free speech issue. If I can't refer to what you are saying, without owing you something, you have power over not just my speech, but a power to limit how your work is subjected to criticism and debate. It's effecti…

>I have sympathy for news publishers i have very little sympathy for news publishers. I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there's almost no point in going to their site directly. And even after you've followed that link it's almost impossib…

> I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism

You know that with Substack all these actual journalists are having no issue getting paid very well.

I'm not sure why we'd want to expand NPR or make more NPR's. We need less of their low-quality and biased journalism IMO, not more.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#248

Post by cush » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:52 PM UTC

Good. Hopefully other states follow. The headline might as well be, “After Decades of Freebooting Their Content, Google Threatens to Kill News Rather Than Pay Journalists for Their Work”

Google is now the modern, lazy business equivalent of a bum asking for free stuff in exchange for “exposure”

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#249

Post by cush » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:55 PM UTC

kemayo wrote: post #6

I agree with Google on this one. Charging a fee just for linking to something is a bad idea. It does get fuzzier if you're also summarizing, and there's clearly some sort of spectrum from "just the URL" to "AI synopsis of the entire article". But at the level we see on Google News (headline + maybe a picture), I don't feel there's any good justification for charging.

Google has single-handely ruined the internet, and absolutely warped our expectations around what the economics of content creation looks like online. Google earns money from that content. Why wouldn’t the content creators be entitled to a cut?

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#250

Post by psychlops » Fri, Apr 12, 2024, 11:56 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #170

I have sympathy for news publishers but I worry a lot about the principle of asserting that linking to something is an act that the link target has proprietary rights to over. At some level, it is almost a free speech issue. If I can't refer to what you are saying, without owing you something, you have power over not just my speech, but a power to limit how your work is subjected to criticism and debate. It's effecti…

> and therefore directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves

Having any government fund news journalism is a bad idea. In any event, you can be certain the revenue will be redistributed to fund the war machine in another country.