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Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act

cbc.ca

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

#31

Post by abdullahkhalids »

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…

> Now you just have a thousand media companies

Those 1000 --media-- news companies have been created in part by Google. Google created a game, where the website with the best SEO would bubble up to the top of their news results - not the website with the best editorial standards. This was Google 'commoditifying its complement'. In the absence of Google (but even in the presence of social media like HN or Facebook), there would be far fewer news websites that would be rewriting/summarizing the work of the actual journalistic newspapers. And in such a scenario the fewer news companies would actually make enough to continue to do serious journalism.

This is a lot more apparent if you look at other languages, which are not indexed as much by Google. There the status of news companies is a lot better.

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

#32

Post by s1artibartfast »

tharmas wrote: post #11
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'm not taking sides but the issue is Canadian content. Because both countries share the same language, but there is a huge mismatch in economic might, Canadian content finds it hard to compete with American content. Mexico doesn't have the same problem largely because of language.

Not sure why the miss match is a problem. If Canadian demand for Canadian media is too low to support it, why should that be the problem of Google.

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

#33

Post by s1artibartfast »

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.

Yeah, and some times that regulatory environment is a greasy extortionist demanding bribes.

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

#38

Post by PoignardAzur »

bensecure wrote: post #24
PoignardAzur wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fair, that's on me for reacting to the headline without reading the article, and "obsolete" is too strong a word.

I was mostly thinking of the lobbying groups in europe which very much didn't want to allow the "exclude from search results" opt-out.

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

#39

Post by xethos »

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.

We have a userbase that, in general, prides itself on reading the article. Far too many here still don't make it past the headline. Do you think Google is actually sending traffic to articles posted by the news orgs, or are people more likely scanning headlines and confirming their biases? At most (on average) I'd expect clicking through and skimming the sub-headline
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