Google Paying More Than 300 EU Publishers For News

Google has signed deals to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries for their news and will roll out a tool to make it easier for others to sign up too, the company told Reuters. From the report: The move to be announced publicly later on Wednesday followed the adoption of landmark EU copyright rules three years ago that require Google and other online platforms to pay musicians, performers, authors, news publishers and journalists for using their work. News publishers, among Google's fiercest critics, have long urged governments to ensure online platforms pay fair remuneration for their content. Australia last year made such payments mandatory while Canada introduced similar legislation last month. The blog did not say how much publishers were being paid. Two-thirds of this group are German publishers including Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "So far, we have agreements which cover more than 300 national, local and specialist news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland, with many more discussions ongoing," Sulina Connal, director for news and publishing partnerships, said in blog post. "We are now announcing the launch of a new tool to make offers to thousands more news publishers, starting in Germany and Hungary, and rolling out to other EU countries over the coming months," Connal said in the blogpost.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

disinformation is a more efficient way to gather clicks, which ultimately drives the sort of business Google seeks.

Re:

[groobly]

I like Sky News. I like Sky News Australia even better, because they are so over the top.

Re:Life Support

[splutty]

Because of course it should be totally free for anyone to steal the news that your reporters write and have other people make money off it.

Re:

[Local ID10T]

Because of course it should be totally free for anyone to steal the news that your reporters write and have other people make money off it.

Did I steal your comment by quoting it for discussion?

What about if I provide a link to your post [slashdot.org] so other people can read your post for themselves?

I take issue with calling it stealing in either case. One is fair use, the other is driving traffic to the source site.

I do not take issue with Google paying news (or other) sites for use of content beyond what would be covered under fair use. It is good for both parties.

except

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not good for both parties. News site traffic dropped like a rock when news.google became a thing. That's why newspapers have been complaining about google for years. Also, AMP.

Re: Life Support

[gravewax]

That isn't really equivalent. If you want to make it the same then you would be taking sections of his comments from a site that generates revenue from hits, you provide a link to it but also all the pertinent info so that most people don't need to ever click the link to see more.

Re:

[Knightman]

You are of course free to back your argument up that this is what Google does. FYI, news.google.com only show headlines - nothing else, and if you want to read the story you click it and you are taken to the original news-story. Funny that....

Re:

[splutty]

Google Google AMP.

Troll mods

[Local ID10T]

I've developed a fan!

Someone clicked through and modded all my posts Troll today... I feel special

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Google is only excerpting these articles, in the USA it would be considered fair use. Then they drive traffic to those news sites, which would literally wither and die without Google doing so. Stealing? That's crap.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Then they drive traffic to those news sites

Except they literally don't which is a large part of the problem. In many cases what shows up in the Google result is actually all pretty much anyone wants to know about the topic. And when people do go to these sites via a search result they have an insanely low clickthrough rate.

Incidentally has anyone else noticed a rise in trapping the browser on websites for mobiles? Quite often I find now clicking on an article from a Google feed and then hitting the back button doesn't actually close the browser and

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Then they drive traffic to those news sites

Except they literally don't which is a large part of the problem.

News orgs literally pay google for placement over other news orgs because they do drive traffic. If they didn't, they wouldn't literally be paying them to do so. Now they want to argue that what they have been paying for is worth nothing. This strongly implies that their news is worth nothing.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

the world is bigger then this thing called USA.

Yes, and most of it has less free speech than this thing called the USA. So when shit like this happens we just boggle at the way your governments are designed to suppress information even more than ours.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

It doesn't have to be a binary choice. Google clearly does derive a lot of revenue from snippets of news, and there is some evidence that shows some people use aggregation sites and snippets as a substitute for visiting the outlet's website.

Seem reasonable that some reasonable fees should be paid. Google can always drop news sources that aren't profitable, if it wants to.

Re:

[beepsky]

Suppose Slashdot should start paying media companies because "stealing" news is this site's entire business model, albeit far more egregiously than google ever did.