Satya Nadella spoke with Australian PM about opportunities created by pay-for-news-plan. Zuck called the Treasurer for a chat, too Satya Nadella and Mark Zuckerberg spoke to Australia’s leaders last week to discuss the nation’s News Media Bargaining Code, a plan to force Google and Facebook to pay when they link to news content. News of the conversations came from Australia’s treasurer Josh Frydenberg on Sunday political chat panel show Insiders. “Mark …
Google and Facebook can still link to things without having to pay a cent: just use an ordinary hyperlink (you know, "a href"). But they're scraping sites and snatching images to present a more enticing offering, which is where they're straying onto news media's turf. They don't want to offer an ordinary hyperlink because it's boring and would make Facebook posts and Google's new sites look cheap, so why not pay a bit for that? If not, I'm happy to use Bing (in fact, I made it my default last week; it's perfectly fine, no biggie).
From what I understand, the new law wouldn't allow that: They have to keep treating news sites and display their results exactly like any other web site. Also, they would have to pay the news site even if all search results became plain hyperlinks.
As far as I understand, this isn't about scraping content at all — Google would happily give the news site complete control over what is displayed, as long as it comes for free. It's about linking to news site, period.
It's about requiring payment just for hyperlinking. That is why Tim Berners-Lee opposes the Australian law.
"Australia's proposed media code could break the world wide web, says the man who invented it"
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jan/20/australias-proposed-media-code-could-break-the-world-wide-web-says-the-man-who-invented-it
Whenever I used to link to a news article I'd first email the journalist and ask their permission. To begin with they were incredibly grateful for the respect, but quickly got sick of the interruptions. I can't afford to pay for all the journals I'd like to read that are increasingly paywalled, but I still like to browse their headlines for important stuff I can find elsewhere. 5 free NYT articles a month - maybe doable with Biden, Trump would burn that in a morning.
The BBC / Times / Telegraph report a lack of paper to print newspapers during the pandemic because so much cardboard is used in home deliveries and not getting recycled quickly enough. Both my cats anticipated this demand and jumped into cardboard boxes a year ago.
They do ask for permission for everything, kind of. Or rather, it's trivial for websites to refuse, using their robots.txt file. IIRC, you can also set headers in each webpage telling Google they're not allowed to index it.
But the permission is not the issue; news sites totally want Google to display titles and snippets of their articles, as long as they get paid — and Google is totally fine with displaying as little or as much as the news sites want, as long as it's free.
That doesn't solve the issue. According to the Australian government, the news sites have no choice but to accept Google scraping their data, due to Google being a quasi-monopoly. If news sites demanded money for scraping their articles, Google could easily afford to not scrape anything from them, and not show any news sites results; but then the news sites would die. The news sites need Google way more than Google needs them.
From a capitalist perspective, you might think that this is working well and Google should not pay a cent. But then again it's a bit as if the only doctor in town would tell you "Sure I can save your life, but you have to give me all your money". You need them way more than they need you, but it's still wrong of them to take advantage.
Not the best analogy, as you have to pay the Dr regardless; news media, like any other business operating on the web, does not pay* Google for their service.
Happy to be corrected, but I honestly cannot think of an arrangement elsewhere, where I can use someone's services for free** and also demand that service provider pay me for my use of that same service. It's absurd.
There's plenty to not like about Google and Facebook, but in this case I think they are right to push back.
What has really surprised me is MSFT's apparent support and willingness to comply with the code? Surely the only way they would agree to this is if they thought there was no chance of being added to the code by the treasurer, or if they thought they could get away with changing their position after they grab Google's share of the Aus Search Pie?
*yes I get we are the product, my point being money is not directly changing hands
**free as in "no such thing as a free lunch", but you get the idea.
The Australian news sites can install in-site search. Look for relevant stories on the relevant site. If they don't want to set up their own, Google will sell them that function.
If the individual news sites don't have interesting stories often enough for a user to be interested, e.g. you only want to know when yet another part of Australia is on fire so you have no other interest in local Prince Philiptown Daily and you're not going to keep checking there in case, then they can collectively set up a shared search and call it Fire Down Below, and you just use that.
“I can't afford to pay for all the journals I'd like to read that are increasingly paywalled, but I still like to browse their headlines for important stuff I can find elsewhere.” That there is exactly the problem. It might be only headlines but there is a written story under them which you won’t read as you now search on the headline topic to find background info for free.
So, what they are only headlines, headlines that have given you the important news stories of the day. Before the internet when it was print you could see the front-page headlines, but there would only be 2 or 3 actual stories over all the main national papers the rest of the stories with headlines would be inside the papers which you don’t see without buying the paper. Now you could pick up the paper in the shop browse through it then another but how long would it be before you hear those famous words “this isn’t a bloody library either buy a paper or piss off”.
But back to the present what is happening is Google are setting themselves up as a news distributor with Google News. On Google News you can see the top stories for a category world, country, business etc. But they are not creating the content they are distributing the headlines for the press. Now they are links to those stories but they maybe behind a paywall. If you are only after the basic events you have it and if you want more info then you can now search for free info on those stories.
Now this is where the search algorithm comes in. Google is trying to become the gateway to the news and some news companies will sign up with Google. So now even if you don’t use Google News what’s to stop them from favouring their partners through what for most is their default search engine? Google now a news distributor also controls how you search for the news.
Now I am not saying that we should bend over backwards for the press they need to adapt with a business model for the digital age. But that may be difficult with Google distributing the news from various agencies and also controlling which agencies news is found with their control of search.
Normally, I use DuckDuckGo, sometimes with the g! bang if i especially want to see a Google Search. Recently, to see "what I'm missing" I used Google directly - I thought their prominently linked article with thier POV was forced, artificial, hypocritical, and unconvincing - Mel Silva, Managing Director for Google Australia - "When you put a price on linking to certain information, you break the way that search engines work, and you no longer have a free and open web". Pretty much all of the comments posted there were negative...
I'm surprised they haven't managed to put all those YouTube videos from the Google spokeswoman saying they would pull search into the memory hole before coming out with something like that. Or maybe not, it seems de regueur to just say one thing one day and the complete opposite the next despite of all the evidence to the contrary because the constant gaslighting from governments and corps everywhere just tires people out.
What news organs (i.e. what news) are they trying to protect? Quick gander at the Sydney Morning Herald and it is either (1) overseas news available at a plethora of other places online and (2) domestic news which non-Australians are not particularly interested in. Sorry, Aussies, but even the Melbourne Cup gets limited exposure outside the country.
Coupled with the fact that news media gaily plagiarises each others reports all the time so I am gagging at the hypocrisy.
@PhillipN. True IMHO. When overseas outside Oz-NZ Oz does not count. However, the clerks who presume to be intellectuals and advisors in Oz do seem to have the strange idea that Oz is a pace setter and looked to for "leadership" . Just why this delusion is so persistent is unknown. To be irrelevant would be their ultimate nightmare. Please, do us Ozzies a favor world. Totally ignore us.
Surely whoever "owns" the content should have control over who views and pays?
I think 'big tech' would be wise not to overplay their hands thinking they should be able to do whatever they want. They control IP and content rights tightly themselves. They might initiate a rolling snowball effect where more countries decide they are happy to forgo Google services. It won't take long for others to replace them if there's an opening in the market.
If I was a government I would be very concerned at the action against Parler. If you present a service as open and public you better not close people down until they have actually been proven to have broken a law or contract. If governments get the idea someone else has control of their content and services they will react. There must be a lot of governments pondering what happens if they pass a law or make a statement big tech disagrees with.
Prime Minister's meeting with Google 'constructive' but he isn't backing down
Morrison and his army of ministers have this week touted Microsoft's Bing as the answer to the Google-sized hole that would be left if it did, in fact, pull the plug.
Microsoft president Brad Smith on Wednesday threw his support behind the code
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