Why Google, Facebook must purchase news content worldwide
The shutting down of several newspapers’ print editions amid the coronavirus lockdown has magnified the problem of Google and Facebook snatching up news content from media organisations and making a profit for themselves. A pittance is paid out to the publishers through Google’s and Facebook’s advertisements on the net pages it disseminates.
In fact, after the duopoly of Google and Facebook was established through the years, news organisations were designed to compete with each other to get on Google Information’ top results by paying to be displayed prominently. Google also introduced Google amp, whereby the web page would load more rapidly but with a Google dominant url and Google advertisings served combined with the content.
In the same way, Facebook forced news websites to simply accept a “revenue-sharing” model where the social media outfit would grab and share news content. The problem was that Facebook will be allowed to post advertisements along with it, a share of whose earnings would go to the media outfit.
Granted that Google and Facebook provide news content legs. They take the report beyond the geographical limits of the newspaper’s reach. But if the disseminator makes practically all the gains and shares mere peanuts with the producer of the content, how prolonged will information production survive?
This question was not seriously asked by news organisations scrambling to handle finding a income model on the web in the first 2000s and getting nowhere, and for that reason trying to best the other person to obtain additional clicks and shares by paying Google and Facebook. However now with no print advertising in enough time of corona to cushion losses from having their content material shared around free of charge, governments are stepping in with respect to news organisations and showing Google and Facebook to perform fair, and share.
Recently France, Spain now Australia, have ordered Google and Facebook to pay publishers for news content.
On April 9, it had been reported that France’s competition authority had ordered Google to pay publishers to show snippets on its news, search and discovery pages. It told the internet giant to negotiate payments with media organisations it had been leeching content from.
Similarly, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it would release draft rules in late July for Google and Facebook to pay good compensation for journalistic content siphoned off press.
The ACCC had attemptedto negotiate a voluntary code where the global giants would consent to pay traditional media because of their content, AFP reported.
In retaliation to such orders in Spain, Google employed a good scorched earth policy and shut its news flash platform. The aggregator decided to make use of the arm-twisting move instead of share revenue with media publishers whose considerable investment will pay for reporters, editors, graphic artists and others to create the content.
Facebook too has protested Australia’s orders telling it has already made a USD 100 million investment found in the news industry to greatly help new organisations struggling amid the coronavirus crisis. But this attitude of benevolence versus paying what’s fair is precisely the problem.
Facebook and Google produce zero articles of their own. They are merely aggregators. Imagine a situation where Amazon or Flipkart just picked up items from sellers and makers and paid nearly little or nothing to them. The same style holds good for news too.
News publishers hire journalists, purchase infrastructure and produce media in a readable data format with a huge selection of crores of rupees of investment. Why has it been okay for Google and Facebook to aggregate and “sell off” news thus produced, by gobbling up all advertising revenue for themselves?
Another example from the media world is the utilization of photographs from wire services. Publishers pay the news headlines agencies to use their photographs. But Google and Facebook get to display the images and news stories without the payment either to the agency or even to the publisher that pays the wires.
And for how Facebook and Google grade and rank news organisations whose content they use, there are no transparent guidelines. This creates an uneven playing field for publishers trying to compete for speed and depth of stories. Even if a publisher puts out a tale first or gets the most insights to offer on a development, Google news displays arguably inferior results of websites that are ranked higher. In sales pitches to publishers, Google and Facebook have promised better visibility for payment. But that’s another matter, to be argued following the platforms first make fair payments for fair work.
Because of this, governments worldwide must follow the European and Australian precedents which may have sought to get rid of the parasitic relationship Google and Facebook have with the news headlines media, and create a new symbiotic one.
