Google Says It Hasn't Promised To Help News Sites By Sharing Money and User Data

UPDATE (2:53 PST): Google say it hasn't lined up any deals to share revenue and user data with online news sites, calling Sunday news reports "totally wrong."

"We have not reached any conclusions on the revenue side," Google spokeswoman Maggie Shiels told CNET. "We haven't reached any conclusions [regarding] subscriptions and need to speak to publishers."

An anonymous reader shared the text of CNET's original report: The web giant is planning to share a chunk of its revenue with publishers, the Financial Times reported Sunday. Google's plan is to mate its treasure trove of personal data with machine learning algorithms to help news publications grow their subscriber base, the newspaper reported... The deal Google is offering to news publishers will reportedly be similar to the arrangement Google has with traditional advertisers through its AdSense business. "We want to have a healthy ecosystem where we'll benefit both as a society and with our business," Richard Gringas, Google's head of news, told the FT.
Financial Times claimed that Google had promised that the revenue sharing "will be very, very generous," while TechCrunch had reported that Google would also be claiming "a 30% finder's fee" for every new subscriber.

They getting cut off from sites?

[rsilvergun]

or are they just afraid of Anti-trust? Because previously they just used to stick of pulling them from google search results to keep the news sites in line.

Re:

[PoopJuggler]

They wouldn't even be able to if we had a decent FCC and POTUS.

get them hooked

[turkeydance]

then call the shots.

Subscribers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that still a thing? Why would anyone pay for news. Plenty of content for free. It's garbage mostly.

Response to Windows 10 News Tile?

[Billly Gates]

For those on Windows 10 I am sure you have noticed news alerts in your action center as well as flashing news with pictures on the tile when you click the start button. Microsoft also charges a 30% fee for news which redirects you to USAtoday or Time.com or something in their UWP container.

I have a feeling the next version of Android will come with the same. Perhaps a refresh on the Google start page that shows news items in addition to your frequently visited sites.

Short term - long term

[VeryFluffyBunny]

In the short term, Google has changed they way people access information and news and made itself a powerful gate-keeper. In the longer term, their revenue model is killing off the very stuff that Google depends on; content that people want to read on a regular basis, i.e. high-quality. Google doesn't produce any high-quality content. They aren't writers or publishers and now they've publicly admitted the bind they're in. Their solution: Offering money back to the publishers they've been taking it away from

This is a shakedown

[RhettLivingston]

Whether you call it a finder's fee or a payment for protection, to go to an independent business that already exists and would normally not be beholden to a larger entity, change the rules that they live under, and say we'll be very, very generous and only take xxx percent of the business we let you keep is a classic mob-style shakedown.

It seems like someone needs to be taking a serious look at the racketeering laws.

Regular newspapers are doomed; deal with it.

[knorthern knight]

Here's a link to a Canadian report [PDF] begging and pleading for taxpayer support for newspapers. https://shatteredmirror.ca/wp-... [shatteredmirror.ca] Page 18 has a graph to numbers of newspapers sold per 100 households in Canada. Some datapoints...

* 1950 102 newspapers per 100 households
* 1975 79
* 1995 49
* 2015 18

Extrapolate to 2027, and the number hits zero sold. There'll still be the freebie rags in newstands at bus stops and subway stations.

US numbers are also bad. Go to http://www.journalism.org/fact... [journalism.org] and under "Audience" click on the "Data" tab. US weekday circulation peaked at 63.34 million in 1984, and has since dropped to under 34.7 million in 2016. The past 2 years have been the worst, losing almost 3 million per year.

I repeat, newspapers as we know them are dying, deal with it.

So...

[fred911]

Whose responsibility at the Financial Times is it to verify data before publishing it as fact? How culpable are the editors here for publishing fake news?

"UPDATE (2:53 PST): Google say it hasn't lined up any deals to share revenue and user data with online news sites, calling Sunday news reports "totally wrong."