The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy • Hacker News Board

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#51

Post by PeterisP » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:30 PM UTC

c16 wrote: post #22

What's stopping Google from refusing to pay the news sites, thus de-indexing them from Google entirely? If the relationship is "pay me for my content", then refusing to serve links to their media is absolutely within their rights. Only the publishers have something to lose here.

As the article states, this is the exact thing that happened in Spain and Germany, with the result being that the major publishers folded. Which is an argument that "make google pay" idea is futile and doomed from the beginning; the publishers can't make google pay simply because they need google far more than google needs them.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#52

Post by Kalium » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

eiaoa wrote: post #31

mailslot wrote: post #6

Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising and tracking. They’re so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they hardly even function any longer. Even if Google links to a news site, I won’t click. It’s probably 30 secs for my new iPhone to partially fail loading, abruptly reload, and then auto play video I didn’t ask for... while covering the article with more ads that I have to c…

> Local and major news sites alike, are cesspoools of intrusive advertising and tracking. They’re so poorly built, with so much advertising, that they hardly even function any longer. But that's an effect , though maybe one that will create a vicious cycle. It's not the cause. The revenue rug was pulled out from under local news websites, and they're struggling to keep the lights on. Advertising and tracking are how…

Local news organizations have always been required to maintain two competencies - advertising and journalism. This predates Google News, Google, and indeed the internet.

You're completely right about the absolutely critical importance of a free, open, and brave press. Yet it's possible that this particular business problem, the one you have so wisely and correctly pointed to, is not novel. Newspapers historically have found a variety of ways to fund their operations. I hope they can continue to exhibit the entrepreneurial spirit that helps keep a vibrant press free!

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#53

Post by skybrian » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #38

reaperducer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Google News really that big a deal for publishers? Considering all the places where they voluntarily put their content (Facebook, Twitter, Apple News, etc...), is the loss of Google News really a problem? I don't see anything magic about Google News that isn't done better (Apple News), or more thoroughly (Twitter) elsewhere.

They are referring to news snippets that show up in Google Search (not the Google News app on your phone). Those are one of the most significant sources of traffic for publishers.

Even for a web search, Google News doesn't show snippets at all anymore, just headlines and thumbnails. (This is in the "Top Stories" widget and on the "News" tab.)

It looks like the snippet is still there for generic web results, but that's further down the page for a news search and probably not a big driver of traffic.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#54

Post by Kalium » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #44

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge publishers are fighting is effectively scabs in a union strike. If news publishers block Google, the one (or few) publisher who chooses not to gets all the traffic. And the problem with news is it's easily copied and redistributed. So the real reporters and journalists could all block Google and Google may try to sustain itself on pushing blogspam instead. It's very possible that only government regulat…

> It's very possible that only government regulation which forces participation (such as the link tax) can actually work. Why don't we just make Google give every news org a few million a year then? Why pretend it's anything else but Google directly paying for the news? Side point, if news subscriptions were reasonably priced (upfront pricing, and billed monthly instead of this odd weekly nonsense), they would probab…

Google brings traffic, traffic brings views, and views bring ad revenue. The number of media outlets, today or historically, that subsist entirely on subscriber numbers is tiny next to the amount that use subscriptions as well as ads.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#55

Post by nine_k » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #43

Most news sites have comment sections. I am wondering if someone could post copyrighted material on purpose in the comment section and use the new EU law to sue publishers.

IIRC, according to the new regulations, anything that a user uploads must be pre-screened for copyright violations before being made public.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#56

Post by yorwba » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #46

IanCal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Implementing youtube-style content id will be a huge burden for small companies. There's stuff in every version I've read about the measures required being different due to size so I don't really follow the point here. And people on the other end (the uploaders) must have recourse, there's a mandated appeals process unlike the current situation.

That’s good info about #1, because it seems to be an O(n * m) problem where n is number of existing copyrighted works and m is the number of uploads. I’m more concerned about the way copyright itself may need to change to work sensibly with this — according to several UK lawyers I’ve talked to, under UK law any work is copyrighted the moment it is put down in a fixed medium. For example, this comment, the moment it i…

> For example, this comment, the moment it is recorded to any database or cache. It is not a sensible rule as-written, and common law saying “now now, don’t be silly” is the only reason things are not already out of hand.

It's the same in civil law countries, and the real reason things aren't out of hand is that every site that allows arbitrary users to upload content has some legal boilerplate such as

By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#57

Post by bepotts » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #21

I think if pressure from "traditional" publishers keeps going, google is going to put plan B in action and go on to actually own the news as well. It's not hard for them to build an "uber for news" for journalists, editors and the common man, as in fact they have been subsidizing the open web with adsense for decades anyway. Maybe the next google reader will be about google's own news.

The problem with that plan is that if Google were to release such a service in the EU, the EU would then fine Google for using their search monopoly to prop up a service in another industry (News). The EU did something similar when Google used their search monopoly to promote Google Shopping.

EU is gonna EU.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#58

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

Kurtz79 wrote: post #12

"Traffic of news sites depends heavily on Google." It seems counterintuitive to me, at least for my use case. I rarely search for "news", I have a handful of websites to which I usually go to for them. I might search the name in Google if for whatever reason it doesn't show on the top results when I start typing the name on the search bar, because I'm too lazy to use bookmarks. Do most other people use aggregators or…

I don't search for news in the general term, but sometimes when you google famous people news articles are among the results. Those could also be, say, an earth quake in tahity when you google tahity.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#59

Post by whatshisface » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #47

jopsen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there are cloud providers out there offering this rather cheap... And it's only going to be cheaper in the future :)

You're absolutely right! It's certainly going to become cheaper and easier to host video! With that said, is it perhaps possible that the problems publishers of content struggle with are in the main not those of the nuts and bolts of publishing? Perhaps, even, that these problems (content discovery, gaining access to users, analytics, ad management) might be well-addressed by platforms?

We could start a company that indexes websites so that they can be discovered. To help them monetize their content, we could also design an advertising platform that didn't require any special contracts or business clout to join. An advertising platform that was based on the words on the webpage - we could use it to fund the discovery side of our business. Let me call up my Stanford buddies and we'll get going. I know a guy named Eric that might like this idea.

Re: The Media Industry and the “Make-Google-Pay” Fantasy

#60

Post by notatoad » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

wbl wrote: post #28

paol wrote: post #9

I'm a lot less worried about the "link tax" clauses than the copyright liability clause. Not because the link tax is a good idea but because it's a spectacular own goal that is mainly going to hurt the idiots who lobbied for it. Giving companies direct liability for policing copyright in user-uploaded content is a much bigger disaster, on two separate fronts, both highly damaging: 1) Implementing youtube-style conten…

No because you can publish it yourself. We don't need giant middlemen to use the Internet.

most people do need middlemen though. if you require everybody to host their own content on their own websites, you go back to the old days of the internet where the only content was published by nerds. which had a certain charm, but was a lot smaller and less inclusive than today's internet.