European News Agencies Again Demand Google, Facebook, Etc. Pay Up For Sending Them Traffic

from the definition-of-insanity dept

Fri, Dec 15th 2017 10:41am — Tim Cushing

Because it's worked oh so well in the past, European news agencies are (again!) calling for service providers like Google and Facebook to start paying them money for sending them business.

Nine European press agencies, including AFP, called Wednesday on internet giants to be forced to pay copyright for using news content on which they make vast profits.

The call comes as the EU is debating a directive to make Facebook, Google, Twitter and other major players pay for the millions of news articles they use or link to.

"Facebook has become the biggest media in the world," the agencies said in a plea published in the French daily Le Monde.

"Yet neither Facebook nor Google have a newsroom... They do not have journalists in Syria risking their lives, nor a bureau in Zimbabwe investigating Mugabe's departure, nor editors to check and verify information sent in by reporters on the ground."

"Access to free information is supposedly one of the great victories of the internet. But it is a myth," the agencies argued.

"At the end of the chain, informing the public costs a lot of money."

This is a doomed idea. First off, if the demands are a pain to implement, news agencies can expect to start seeing referral traffic drop as other news sources not tied to payment demands see their search engine stock rise. If they continue to press for a cut of these companies "billions," they can expect to be cut off completely. This isn't hypothetical.

Second, any agency that wants to cut off the search engines supposedly bleeding them dry can always block the engines' crawlers. But this obviously isn't about killing off search engine hits and Facebook sharing -- it's about dipping a hand into pockets of service providers for having the audacity to expand the reach of European news agencies.

Finally, there's nothing in it for news agencies even if they succeed in getting a snippet tax implemented. They see companies worth billions and think skimming a little off the top will put them back in the black permanently. But anyone who knows anything about ad payouts knows CPM "taxes" aren't the road to riches. In reality, any implemented scheme would involve hundreds of news sites divvying up fractions of cents between themselves for search result impressions. Payouts might be slightly higher for more direct clicks from referrers like Facebook, but at best, new agencies should expect a few bucks a month from a link tax, rather than the thousands (or millions) they envision.

The news agencies supporting this move are complaining about declining ad revenue and think charging platforms for sending them traffic is the solution. This has been tried and it hasn't worked, but hope springs eternal when you're all out of innovative ideas.

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Filed Under: aggregators, eu, europe, google tax, linking, news, newspapers, reporting, search engines, snippet tax

30 Comments

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TheResidentSkeptic (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 10:38am

Turn around is fair play...
... maybe they should send the news agencies a bill for providing advertising for them....
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I.T. Guy, 15 Dec 2017 @ 10:46am

"European New Agencies" :)
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Machin Shin, 15 Dec 2017 @ 10:59am

Really kind of funny. A lot of people pay facebook and google per click to drive traffic to their site. These people are trying to with a straight face to say facebook and google should pay them.
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An Onymous Coward (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 11:02am

Re:
If Google and Facebook were EU companies none of this would be happening.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 11:16am

Do Facebook users read the news?
Do any Facebook users actually read the news on Facebook?
...
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RedBeard (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 11:17am

Dummies
Google should send them all a copy of Robots.txt for Dummies with a coupon for a free seminar entitled:
"How to keep Google from Driving People to Your News Site" (subtitled) "How to make More Money with Fewer Clicks? Well . . . Uhmmm . . . Please Let Us Know if you Figure that One Out"
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 11:45am

Re: Do Facebook users read the news?
I was not aware they had any news
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 11:50am

Re: Do Facebook users read the news?
I click on new articles my facebook friends post.

I've never understood people complaining about the content in their news feed being dumb. If you have dumb people posting dumb things, unfriend them or at least hide all content from them.

Aside from the ads interspersed, facebook is what you and your friends make it.
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Peter (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 11:51am

"They do not have journalists in Syria risking their lives"
Maybe not. Google, Facebook and Twitter do have a lot of users in Syria who post news stories. Which in turn get re-written into 'professional' news reports by 'our resident Syria expert in Tel Aviv or Istanbul'.

Interesting idea that Google and Facebook should buy back the news that they generated in the first place.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 12:09pm

so dont send them a fucking thing, Google etc and see how they like them apples!!
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 12:18pm

Google always bends to copyright whiners.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 12:51pm

Re:
Not in this case. Google pulled out of Spain entirely because they tried this crap.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 1:16pm

Re:
Google has done that before. They got sued over it if I recall correctly. I believe techdirt actually wrote an article about that.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 1:25pm

Re: Re:
My memory might be a little off, but here's the techdirt article: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121213/08013521375/belgian-newspapers-agree-to-drop-lawsuit-over -google-news-after-google-promises-to-show-them-how-to-make-money-online.shtml
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Mononymous Tim (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 1:46pm

Deindex them and show them what it's like not to have free advertising.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 1:48pm

Tiresome
From now on, Google simply quits sending traffic to anyone who insists on being paid for inbound traffic. In fact, since Google can't be certain what constitutes news, don't spider, list, or any way acknowledge the existence of "news agencies" that insist on payment. Solve this tiresome bullshit.
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That One Guy (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 3:02pm

Re: Re:
I'm not so sure, the underlying idea of 'They have lots of money. We want money. Make them give us money' would be the same regardless of where Google/Facebook was based, so not seeing how it would change much.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 4:05pm

Google has done that stopping of sending traffic before in Spain and Belgium. In Belgium, they backed off when their net traffic dropped a huge amount. It is what Google does when this sort of thing happens.

There is this huge change of heart once they see what it does to their readship.
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Bergman (profile), 15 Dec 2017 @ 5:44pm

Re: Turn around is fair play...
Or even better, I wonder how many of the people those news outlets write articles about are paid for being newsworthy?

After all, the EU has publicity rights laws -- perhaps those news outlets should start paying for the information they repackage.
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Dec 2017 @ 6:59pm

Re: Re:
What if everyone tries it?
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PaulT (profile), 16 Dec 2017 @ 5:02am

"Yet neither Facebook nor Google have a newsroom... They do not have journalists in Syria risking their lives, nor a bureau in Zimbabwe investigating Mugabe's departure, nor editors to check and verify information sent in by reporters on the ground."

Nor do they need most of those things for the bulk of what they do as companies. So?

"At the end of the chain, informing the public costs a lot of money."

Yes. So, why do you object to those companies sending the public further down "the chain" where you can monetise them, rather than go to other news sources or never read the stories at all?

As usual, the basics are answered in the rant, they just don't want to understand what they're saying.
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PaulT (profile), 16 Dec 2017 @ 5:09am

Re: Re: Re:
They won't really notice. Google don't directly monetise the news service, and if it becomes more of a pain than the indirect income they get is worth, they'll ditch it completely. It's not like they're opposed to randomly ditching useful services for whatever reason they decide.

Google only "bends" when they have to - for example, without giving in to ContentID and other hare-brained demands, it's quite possible that YouTube could have been shut down. They give in when it's going to affect their core businesses by not doing so. With Google News, it's not going to affect them all that much if they just kill it entirely.
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Dec 2017 @ 8:08am

Google should send them the articles where other groups have tried this, Google stopped giving them traffic at all, & their numbers plunged to a point they were BEGGGING Google to link to them again. Google is perfectly willing to walk away & if you thought you were losing money before let us know how no one coming to your site works for you.

You'd think news agencies could have researched this themselves, but I think they've fired most researchers to pay for more ad-block-blockers.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2017 @ 10:39am

"At the end of the chain, informing the public costs a lot of money."

In the middle of the chain, informing the public about information costs a lot of money too.

Information isn't free. Information of information, neither.
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Andy Prosper, 16 Dec 2017 @ 12:10pm

Facebook was a social network for those who spoke English" and that the real problem today, for newspaper companies, is that "Google and Facebook are left with 80% of the publicity and they do not hire any journalist ". In that sense, he pointed out those who ask the government to intercede, that what you have to ask is that conditions are put "for Google and Facebook to pay for the content they use. http://www.prodigitalweb.com/google-and-facebook-should-pay-those-who-feed-them-content/
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Dec 2017 @ 12:51pm

Re: Re:
Nope, it would have ALREADY happened.
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Seegras (profile), 17 Dec 2017 @ 8:32am

Re:
Google always bends to copyright whiners.

Yup, except when it's people complaining about copyfraud.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Dec 2017 @ 2:17pm

Re:
Besides the fractured English, the logic in that article is flawed. Almost every step of the way the author re enforces the idea that the media outlets want money for letting google, facebook, whatever, lead traffic their way.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Dec 2017 @ 2:26pm

Re: Turn around is fair play...
Most "news agencies" like the sun, the dailymail, drudge report, fox etc are just bots grabbing sentences from different sites about existing stories and assembling them into clickbait.

This is why you'll occasionally see the Sun (UK) and the Daily Fail spout gibberish that looks like the ravings of a Nigerian Email Prince.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Dec 2017 @ 8:50am

If these company's don't want Google to link to them, it's really EASY to create a robot.txt file can BAM, no more Google linking to anything on your site!!!!

They don't want that of course, they want a way to make money from News story links. Google and Facebook have MONEY.

What I think Google and Facebook should do is UNLINK every one of them that are complaining right now. Just pull them, they'll then have nothing to complain about. That way those that still want Google's links will still be linked. Hell, they'll see more traffic.

Because if they do create a law forcing Google and Facebook to pay everyone, Google and Facebook will just take everyone down, wither they were complaining or not. Then they get no traffic and no money.

Why play this game? Maybe have Google's Lawyers first send them a letter that they will be taken down from Google per their wishes as Google refuses to pay them for links. Problem solved!!!!
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