top | item 37389462

(no title)

Google News is tiny and irrelevant - that's not what the law is about.

Again - do you really think that if you do a web search, and one of the results goes to a newspaper, then the newspaper should get paid? And none of the other links?

discuss

doctor_eval|2 years ago

> Google News is tiny and irrelevant - that's not what the law is about.

According to SimilarWeb, Google News ranks #114 globally (all websites), and #7 in the News category.

It is much larger than WAPO, and not far behind NYT. Which makes it significantly larger than any news provider anywhere else in the world.

So maybe I'm weird but that hardly seems "tiny and irrelevant".

> do you really think that if you do a web search, and one of the results goes to a newspaper, then the newspaper should get paid? And none of the other links?

From the context, I doubt that you're arguing that everyone should get paid, so I'm not sure what your point is, because I don't see why they shouldn't.

If you do a web search and one of the results goes to a newspaper, and you click the result, then the newspaper can monetise that. I don't have a problem with that.

If you do a web search and it presents enough information that the user can answer their question without clicking, well, that's an interesting problem. The answer would not exist if not for the provider, yet the search engine makes money and the provider of the result does not. This is particularly true when the search engine pops up a news box as a result.

So if a search result provides useful information to a user, and the search engine makes money from providing that answer despite it being sourced from elsewhere - why shouldn't the source of that information be compensated?

As I said above, this law may be clumsy - it might not even be possible - but my objection is to the lazy rhetoric surrounding the issue, which is still bullshit.