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Google Media News

Google Threatens To Cut Off News After California Proposes Paying Media Outlets (theverge.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the pending-legislation dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google says it will start removing links to California news websites in a "short term test for a small percentage of California users." The move is in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which would require Google to pay a fee for linking Californians to news articles. "If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers," Jaffer Zaidi, Google VP of global news partnerships, wrote in a blog post announcing the decision. "The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience." Zaidi adds that Google will also pause "further investments in the California news ecosystem," referring to initiatives like Google News Showcase, product and licensing programs for news organizations, and the Google News Initiative. A study (PDF) conducted in 2023 estimates that Google would owe U.S. publishers around $10 to 12 billion annually if the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a national bill, is passed.
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Google Threatens To Cut Off News After California Proposes Paying Media Outlets More

Google Threatens To Cut Off News After California Proposes Paying Media Outlets

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  • Journalism costs money. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everyone agrees that good journalism costs money. People who want good journalism should expect to pay for it and subscribe to their preferred news source (ideally one who values truth and facts over fiction and lies, but to each their own). If others pay (including Google, Facebook, etc.) they get to determine what you see and learn. And that is not what anyone should want.
    • It's not so much that people are unwilling to pay (we literally paid for hundreds of years), it's just hard to convince people to pay when a free alternative is available.

    • Re:Journalism costs money. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday April 12, 2024 @06:37PM (#64390522)
      Most of what we get isn't good journalism. Most of what is good journalism is reposted from the AP and none of the people working at the publication could be assed to add twenty paragraphs telling us how to feel about it.

      I'm with Google on this one. Rent seekers can piss off. Any publication that doesn't want Google "stealing" their content can add a few lines to their robots.txt and never have to worry about Google taking anything from them again.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sound+vision ( 884283 )

        Worried about theft, just stop earning money. I suppose that's one way to do it.

        The whole issue is related to Google's monopoly/infrastructure-like status. When readers exchanged directly with news outlets, we didn't have these problems. Only after Google was inserted as the gatekeeper.

        It's hard for me to find pity for Google being in a position they created, and are profiting wildly on. It's far beyond seeking rent.

        • Re:Journalism costs money. (Score:4, Informative)

          by codebase7 ( 9682010 ) on Saturday April 13, 2024 @07:52AM (#64391258)

          Google being in a position they created

          There's nothing stopping you from clicking on a news orgs' logo to get to their web page to check the news. Google created a search engine. The news orgs. didn't have to allow Google to index them. They still don't. If the news orgs. want to, they can mandate that all search engines are not allowed to index their content. Making themselves the gatekeepers once again.

          and are profiting wildly on

          That assumes that people would have continued on to the news site after reading the headline. The problem is the news orgs. claim "lost sale" just as much as the rest of the media industry. Honestly, I'm surprised they don't just declare "Piracy!1!!" like they normally do in these cases. It costs money to host a server. Most operators (including the news orgs.) pay those costs though serving ads along with the user's requested info. If Google or any other search engine is able to completely undercut your profits because they indexed your site, then you either have nothing of value that cannot be summarized in a search result, or you need to put that information out of the search engine's reach. (Free to do, only requires their own staff to set it up on their own servers, and would take no time at all to maintain if done properly.) That's a failure of the news orgs. Not Google, nor any other search engine.

          The whole issue is related to Google's monopoly/infrastructure-like status.

          There's nothing to prevent someone from posting QR-Codes or otherwise linking to a news site. Yes, Google's service makes that unnecessary (in some cases), but it's not a hard requirement. Once again, there's also nothing that prevents news orgs. from dictating that only a non-descriptive link to their site be allowed in Google's (or any other search engine's) results. Google will simply serve the link with a description that looks like (paraphrased): "We'd like to give you a more detailed description, but this site does not allow it." This is not a case of an ISP blocking access at the IP address level to Fox News or CNBC. This is not a case of state-sponsored censorship (I.e. China / Russia / etc.) that requires a VPN to bypass. You can still get to them even if your search engine of choice is limited to saying "This site exists." It's not a monopoly. Unless your definition of monopoly includes the phrase: "what the majority is using while stubbornly refusing offered alternatives."

          It's far beyond seeking rent.

          Nope. It's sending ad revenue to the news orgs in the form of free advertising that they have the option of 100% opting out of on their own terms. (robots.txt) That's the exact opposite of rent seeking.

          Rent seeking is what the news orgs are doing: They want their free advertising AND they want the search engines to pay them for the privilege of providing free advertising. If I walked up to your business and demanded that you not only direct your customers to my business, but also pay me for the privilege of sending your customers to me, you'd be trying to sue me under RICO. The only reason that's not happening here is because:

          1) Everyone (justifiably) hates Big Tech.
          2) News orgs. tend to be owned by king makers, whom the politicians are desperate to please.

          Make no mistake however, if this stands, it will become the precedent for much worse to be applied to far weaker opponents.

    • Having advertisers pay for the news may be part of why the news is so crappy these days: eyeballs equal money, so simply looking at the article is success. The proposed legislation would change this so they get money even if you don't click the link, so the big moneymaker will be SEO with clickbait a secondary objective.

      • Re:Journalism costs money. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by SchroedingersCat ( 583063 ) on Friday April 12, 2024 @06:44PM (#64390530)
        It appears that the proposed legislation will not get them them money but deprive them of traffic and ads revenue instead. This is not entirely unexpected. California legislature passes tons of "feel good" laws that backfire spectacularly.

        • The failure will be due to it only applying to California outlets. Google still gets to use content from the other 49 states, so Google News remains largely unaffected. (While it could very well be a death sentence for the news outlets.) You would need to have the same rules apply to the all of the content.

          It's all related to Google's monopoly/infrastructure-like status. When readers exchanged directly with news outlets, we didn't have these problems. Only after Google was inserted as the gatekeeper.

          • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

            by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 )
            Nothing stops joe blow from opening chrome and typing in the url to their preferred news site. Google news just makes it easier to get stories from multiple sources. Thankfully this law will help clear some of the extreme left leaning socialist garbage from the google news feed.

            • The bulk of news consumption is scanning headlines. Google News lets you scan the headlines of 20 papers, obtain from them your brief of the world's daily events, and not click or pay anything to anyone.

              The worst-hit outlets will trend smaller and local. I'm not sure why you associate that with "extreme left". Google sure doesn't care who's handing them the money. Propaganda outlets have funding secured externally, they will just move out-of-state and continue unimpeded.

              • The bulk of news consumption is scanning headlines. News orgs. lets you scan the headlines of the Associated Press, obtain from them your brief of the world's daily events, and not click or pay anything to anyone.

                FTFY.

        • In other parts of the world there are agreements between facebook/Google and media outlets around the news outlets being paid for news content appearing on websites. Those media outlets haven't died due to a lack of advertising revenue. Think about what that tells you with respect to the value of advertising revenue and how much news outlets get vs how much Google gets. Your very argument ("what about traffic and advertising revenue?!") was raised before. The news outlets (with the help of legislation) call

      • That alone should tell you the legislation is crap. Can I start a publication and get just as money for the lack of clicks as the major publications? If clicks don't matter, then neither does the content and we get even worse crap than we already have.

      • My favourite news outlet has been publicly funded for its entire life, and that funding model hasnt changed.

        20 years ago it had extremely high quality journalism, and an award winning website.

        Today, its quality is through the floor and its website is shite. Most of the stories are reposts from other sites or “feel good” stories that should not be on a news site (and this site has its own “magazine” section, which is where those stories should be).

        The problem in today’s journal

        • Public (aka government) funding in media is a big problem as the owner typically sets the agenda. Not a single public news agency exists in the world that doesnâ(TM)t have serious allegations and evidence of bias, influence operations and misconduct.

          People historically paid for their papers, plenty of people still pay for good quality media. There are actually more independent media outlets now than there were available just a few decades ago. It is no longer the big 5 owning the stories.

          • The one I refer to in my original post went through an extended period of time where it was very obviously anti-government, and covered a lot of negative stories about the then current government.

            So the bias isnt always "pro-owner" - and in this case anyway the funding doesn't come from the government, just a mandated license fee (which kinda lets the cat out of the bag as to whom Im talking about).

            Regardless of which way you want to push it, the BBC at its height was both more independent than most other m

    • People who want good journalism should expect to pay for it and subscribe to their preferred news source

      I'm fine with the free/ad-supported news. The second I hit a paywall, I'm noping right the fuck out. I've got enough bills to pay that I don't need yet another one for my daily dose of doomscrolling.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dvice ( 6309704 )

      > Everyone agrees that good journalism costs money. People who want good journalism should expect to pay for it and subscribe to their preferred news source

      That is not true, there are several alternatives:
      - Government funded news paid via tax money. Quality depends on the country where you live in, but general rule of thumb is that these news sources will not tell you everything.
      - Open source news made with volunteer work
      - News that get their money from ads and sponsors. Youtube has plenty of these. Qual

    • Actually it's what everyone seems to want. Australia, Canada, etc. They all want Sugar Daddy Google to pay up. After all the pimps they used to refer to as "consumers" can't possibly pay them enough to satisfy their gree....er. shareholders. But Sugar Daddy Google's money might make a bigger dent......

  • No (Score:1)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    Don't remove the links. Redirect them to Fox News.

  • They did this in Australia, Canada and now Cali? Time for them to be broken up.

    • They did this in Australia, Canada and now Cali? Time for them to be broken up.

      There's a term for when your business model stops being profitable and instead of adapting you go to the government and ask them to press on the scales of the market: crony capitalism.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 )

      Hi from Australia.

      I was very cynical of the legislation when you consider which conglomerates own the majority of our 'news' - basically several online ad networks masquerading as media companies.

      Particularly when the policy think-tank arm of said previous government have stated goals of dismantling and privatising our government-subsidised ABC and SBS media institutions.

      I'm no great fan of Alphabet nor Meta but pay attention when lobbyists say they have your best interests at heart.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by dvice ( 6309704 )

        > I'm no great fan of Alphabet

        I am a fan. They invented and donated solution to protein folding simulation for humankind for free and it looks like they are going to create more tools that will most likely some day create cure for everything.

  • Thanks for taking your ball and leaving, we've all been waiting for that.

  • It did not work.

  • Go ahead and shut 'er down and see if anyone notices.

  • Fixed that for you. You're welcome.

  • Do I have to pay? (Score:3)

    by ZipK ( 1051658 ) on Friday April 12, 2024 @07:44PM (#64390608)
    If I tell someone about an article I saw on a California news outlet's website, do I have to pay the news outlet for referring to them?

    • Maybe if you printed the website, covered their ads with your own and then gave that to your person

    • No. Thankfully you also don't have to read thousands of other news agencies, collate and serve them to millions of people continually on a daily basis, and sell a few billion worth of ads (etc.) on top of that.

      Because if you did, then you might have some complex problems to consider. Thankfully I have managed to avoid ever being in that scenario. Fingers crossed.

  • If the news sites are not charging people to READ the news on their sites, why in the hell should Google pay them for linking to their sites?

    • If the news sites are not charging people to READ the news on their sites, why in the hell should Google pay them for linking to their sites?

      Advertisers. Local web sites earn their money mainly through advertisers. In the case of the New York Times and other such reliable sources of news, they do charge a yearly fee for people to read the news since their costs are far higher.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by christoban ( 3028573 )

        In the case of the New York Times and other such reliable sources of news

        Hehehehheh. Sorry, yeah, NYT, totally reliable. Just like NPR.

        https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-ed... [thefp.com]

        • Oh yes, such an unbiased source of information.

          This is like Russia always bragging about how sanctions aren't working. If they aren't working, why keep talking about them? Clearly the NYT is a reliable source of information or whiners such as yourself wouldn't keep singling them out.

          • If the sanctions were truly working, Russia would be out of the war. I wish we were serious about winning in Ukraine, but Biden is an extremely weak president. He lacks the ability to use the bully pulpit to persuade people that WE must suffer a little for the Ukrainians by converting a some plants to make artillery shells. That's literally all it would take and the Russians would be pushed out.

            Instead, that absolute old fool has engaged in a war of attrition against an enemy with four times the populati

      • This NYT [theintercept.com]? Reliably biased.
    • I hate that google news links to news sites with paywalls. As soon as I hit one of those news sites they get instantly blocked from my news feed, there's countless other sources I can get the same story from. It's not like journalists do any ground breaking journalism anymore they just regurgitate the AP news feed.

    • The news sites share their content with readers so they can make money from ads. It's been that way since news papers were a thing.

      Google wants to take their content and share it, bypassing the ads that pay for the content, showing ads that pay Google instead.
      Do you see why those spending money to create the content might get mad?

      • Google serves up exactly what those sites specify in their meta tags. If they felt their content was being stolen they could shut it off. The reality is google provides them exposure and traffic which is why they are publishing tags and encouraging their listings on Google's platform.

        • It doesn't work and if you bar google from scraping your content it doesn't help your google ranking. Plus google has a slice of all online advertising as well... and spies on and profiles everybody. platform... more like monopoly power.

          • That's the point. Google isn't robbing them in fact just the opposite google is giving them free advertising. They are lying if they claim the content is being stolen.
  • All the media out of CA is way to left leaning anyways. Will help bring some balance to the google news feed.
    • It might, if much of the media throughout the rest of the country did not also lean far to the left. Unfortunately, as goes California, usually the rest of the nation soon follows.

  • If Google cut off the news feeds, people would have to go straight to the news websites for content

    They'd hate that.

    Oh wait, no they wouldn't.

  • California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA)

    Speculating on the text of the act - perhaps something which will imbue journalists with old-school work ethic and integrity whilst promoting the view that the reading tweets is not the work product of investigative journalism.

  • The news organization should be paying google for the ad
    If it's a copy and not a link, it's a problem

    • That is not sustainable - Google is a parasite in this case, getting advertising revenue from content someone else paid to generate.

      Google doesn't just link, they include summaries and on their news tab, images along side them.

  • If they want money for their articles, they can just put them behind a paywall.

    Why should Google pay to index open content??

  • The Liberal regime in Canada under Herr Trudeau had already caused the big social media tech giants to censor news provided in Canada and we're still under that oppression here in Canada. As a result, shortly thereafter a pile of news outlets filed for bankruptcy protection because what else do you expect to happen when you cut off the hand that feeds you traffic. It's an unfortunate state of affairs when you have politicians who have no idea how the internet works and don't realize that linking to news sto

    • News was being slowly killed off and degraded for decades; somebody has to do something! It also has to be done while big tech actively works against humanity so the best solution can't look so good when it's under full attack; not saying Canada found the best solution. It's something.

      CBC is the best news in Canada anyway. In the USA, we have a tiny sliver of quality news compared to Canada.

  • Roll back the Clinton/GOp bill that limited ownership.there is no real competition and all of the majors are as horrible as China daily and RT. Hell, MOST of Aljazerra is better than the trash from America, China, and Russia.

    • WTF? limited ownership is the big problem we have today and created a lot of the mess we have today. They FAILED to limit ownership. Also, google and other tech companies have gutted it by essentially stealing their income. The founders put a few % of GDP into supporting the free press; we need to get back to something like that (it was free delivery by USPS of news)

      Now you have google scraping answers of web pages and putting them directly into the results so the web site doesn't even see that traffic. T

      • Ownership of media was limited BEFORE 1995?6?( give or take ). Before Clinton and GOP pushed a re-write on media ownership, we had some 50-100 companies that owned media (and that was LONG before the explosion with the Internet).IOW, we had competition. Now? Less than 10 companies own American media ( may be 5, I do not recall ).

        If we return back to requiring limited ownership (as in how much someone can own), then we would see competition and would see decent media. As it is, we are as bad as China and

  • When I search for news from today (when:1d) I get up to 6 year old news, it has become unusable lately.

    • Bbbbuuttt.... Clearly, Google knows what's best for you! Your stated limitation of 1 day would have prevented you from posting to /.

      /s

  • It would make more sense to tax Google and spend that money supporting journalism.

  • In other news, California also proposes for Google to pay Amazon for any products that Google show in it's search results.

  • Google News is probably the only remaining Google product that does not have ad revenue, or any other income stream. They do it more for "prestige", and of course bring people to the Search ecosystem. (i.e.: indirect benefits)

    Hence, in addition to the regular cost of services, and funding the large team behind it, paying extra to just feature news is going to be counter-productive.

    Especially more so, when they already have initiatives to help publishers make money, like making easier to sign on for subscrip

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