[pavelludiq]

Congratulations to the EU commission and the EU parliament on achieving the exact opposite of what they wanted to do despite being told this would happen and despite it actually already happening in Spain and Germany. It's not like this is any kind of surprise, it's the only logical thing that could've happened. I am still extremely bitter about the dirty way this law was passed, the lies, the deliberate lies by the commission, the nasty response EU politicians had at protesters and the absolute contempt they had for young people saying they we're entitled children trained by internet giants to expect free things. I watched the debates in parliament and there were MEPs who actually said that. The horsetrading France and Germany did over Russian gas in order to get a deal on this law. That disgusting blog post the EU commission published calling people who disagreed with them bots and brainwashed and positioning themselves literally as knights out to slay the google dragon. It's all horribly corrupt and cynical. I'm sure many young people got the message that their leaders view them with such absolute contempt and open hatred and I fear the consequences for Europe.

[simias]

Your reaction is over the top IMO. I'm quite perplex about this law myself but I think you're missing the point.

You comment reads a bit like "the workers wanted a raise, now they're on strike and they get less money than previously, achieving the exact opposite of what they wanted to do!" It's technically true of course, but I think they hope that Google will suffer enough from this decision that they'll have to reconsider in the future. Alternatively, they hope that people will still want to get French news and will move to other websites which will accept to give money to the news organizations.

I'm really not sure that it's going to work on either count but on the other hand it's clear that many EU constituents (those who actually pay taxes and employ people in the EU) felt that something had to be done.

>the absolute contempt they had for young people saying they we're entitled children trained by internet giants to expect free things

I mean, if anything I agree with this statement, except I'd put "free" between quotes. The ad-driven business model is a cancer as far as I'm concerned.

[AnonymousPlanet]

> but on the other hand it's clear that many EU constituents (those who actually pay taxes and employ people in the EU) felt that something had to be done.

Why do you think the EU constituents had anything to do with these laws? The laws were incentivised by the publishers. The crux in the EU is that the biggest part of the industry see the internet just as infrastructure and couldn't care less about net neutrality, censorship, equal access, or ad revenues. The only industries affected by those issues are tech companies and publishers.

The tech companies have a pro liberalisation stance while the publishers hate the internet's guts. Now guess where countries with strong and influential publishers and a nearly non existent tech industry are leaning to. That publications like Süddeutsche, Zeit, and FAZ have been portraying the internet as a bad and dangerous thing for decades now, doesn't help.

[maze-le]

Well, we can at least have solace in the fact that these are the exact same outlets that are suffering financial losses since at least 10 years. They are dying a slow death and this is their final straw -- not that it will do them any good, to the contrary. Good riddance!

[pas]

Is there any efficient alternative to big newspapers with decades long editorial reputation?

I'm not pitying the useless money grab ad-infested publications, but they were the ones that actually spent on good journalism.

Though it would be good to see a lot more numbers/data about this. Also probably with globalisation the market simply consolidates. There's no need for more than a handful big "trust anchors" for news. The local news problem is tougher to crack though :/

[rixed]

While the publishers are dying their slow death, the free, peer to peer internet died much quicker.

[nine_k]

Why, it's not died!

It's just a wee bit less popular than the centralized ad-fueled internet.

[tylerl]

> ...they hope that Google will suffer enough from this decision that they'll have to reconsider in the future...

Google loses literally nothing.

Google doesn't make any money off Google news. They make money sending traffic to advertisers, not to news sites. And the Google news page doesn't run ads. It's just a free service.

The only benefit to Google is that it makes their brand better.

This has been the irony all along; Google's been running a 100% free (NOT ad supported) service to help users find news sites, and the news sites demand to be compensated. So OF COURSE this is going to be the response; there was never any money to share.

[milesskorpen]

I disagree. Google wants to train people that they have all the answers, that you don’t need to go elsewhere.

Once they have your attention, then they can sell ads.

Google News is an attention winning product, and it feeds into their broader ad ecosystem even if they don’t monetize it today.

[tylerl]

Right, so like I said, their only benefit is to their brand. It preserves the expectation that Google is the best place to find everything.

And the French law applies to all companies in Google's position, not just to Google. So the there's still nowhere better than Google for users to go.

The only losers in this deal are the French news agencies, and perhaps French users if you consider them worse off for not finding French news sources.

[endorphone]

No it isn't "like you said". You made the absolutely absurd claim that they don't make any money off it. Even if we accept the ridiculous notion that it's just brand, that's still a very valuable input.

So French users go to French media sites. I'm not really seeing the big loser here beyond Google, which is exactly why they've fought this so hard and for so long (despite, by your take, making no money on it).

[Mirioron]

I don't think that the alternative to French users on Google News are French news sites. I think the alternative is a non-European news site on Google News instead.

[hartator]

Technically if you buy Google News from Google, you won’t make any money as-is. So OP is not wrong.

[untog]

> Google loses literally nothing.

That's not true. The entire reason Google hosts these "snippets" on their search results page is to keep users on that page and not clicking through to other sites. With this they lose that ability.

You're talking as if Google News is the only affected site here. It isn't: the vast majority of this traffic is on search results pages. Which Google does make vast amounts of money from.

[beaner]

Are you saying this out of theory or experience? Anecdotally as a user I can tell you that when I see a compelling snippet, I am more likely to click, not less.

[shkkmo]

While the quick answers on the right of Google search results may be designed to keep people from clicking through, I have never seen that feature used for a news article (for me is is usually stackoverflow and Wikipedia where this has an impact on click throughs.)

I don't think this is the case for search or news. The "snippets" under a search result make me more likely to click through and really don't ever provide enough info to allow me to skip reading the page.

Since your assertion runs counter to my (and others) experience, I hope you have some actual data to back this up? Perhaps a website that added a robots.txt to prevent snippet collection and saw an improvement in traffic from search?

[propogandist]

google serves AMP websites whenever possible (from Google News) as they've scared publishers into adopting their standard. AMP strips traditional advertising networks and monetization options from the website and is only compatible with Google's Ad Network.

So Google gets to advance the dominance of AMP, gets to track user behavior and does make money from Google News. If it didn't really have any value to Google and advance their agenda, it would be shutdown.

[SquareWheel]

Supported ad networks:

https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-ad/#supported-a...

[endorphone]

Google doesn't make any money off Google news.

This is a remarkably naive take.

If Google provides a service, they make money off it.

In 2008, during one of the many legal battles Google has waged over Google News, Google estimated that they made $100M off of people using Google to access news. Clearly that number would be some factor larger now. Because the more people who rely upon Google for a service, the less they end up elsewhere. The more Google controls your eyeballs and is likely to capture your ad clicks.

It's the same reason Google scrapes the web and provides the top answer in their answer bubble. It's "free" and it also robs viewers from ever going to the sites actually providing the information.

Or do you think Google puts all of that engineering effort, endless lobbying and legal fights with the news community...because they're just so benevolent?

Even ignoring the captured attention, this also enables Google to prioritize news sources that are more Google friendly (e.g. use Google ad networks), and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

[creato]

If google is making money off news, and isn't showing ads on it's "news" page, it must be making money off of ads on the sites it links to.

If that's the case, then they must believe the snippets send more people to news websites than they otherwise would?

[cameronbrown]

No. The vast majority of the informed peoples of the EU campaigned and pleaded them not to pass Article 13. The fact they turn around and basically call us too stupid to know what's best is just icing on the cake. They ignored the people.

Honestly, the entire institution gets what it deserves. I've never seen such an utter shambles of democracy as bad as the Article 13 one.

[derefr]

I mean... zooming out here, and ignoring the specifics of this case in favour of the “shape” of it—this is basically the point of representative democracy! What it’s supposed to enable, I mean. A group elects someone who’s better at statecraft than the group is; and then that elected representative uses their statecraft abilities to make choices and deals that are optimal for their constituency’s long-term benefit, but which the people could never have made on their own, because those choices don’t have a compelling narrative or “image” to garner populist sentiment. (Or, from the people’s perspective: elected representatives engage in awful horse-trading and disrespect their constituency’s opinions, and yet gradually everything gets better “somehow.”) Or: the people hire a sausage-maker, and then get mad at the process of making sausage.

Sometimes representative democracy has problems, sure; the usual generation gap between politicians and their constituencies is a big reason it takes so long for human-rights legislation (on e.g. gay marriage) to catch up with public sentiment.

But it’s still probably better than the alternatives, e.g. direct democracy. There are a lot of things you just can’t get done using direct democracy. Imagine a nation run by referendum trying to negotiate e.g. a distasteful-but-strategically-necessary wartime alliance with another nation. Sausage needs to get made; but who has the political capital to make it?

[fsloth]

"this is basically the point of representative democracy"

Democracy is not a system to promote meritocracy. It's a system to avoid autocracy, and all other things are exernalities rising from this core purpose.

The point of democracy is to have a constant churn within a large enough powerpool to discourage formation of ruling cliques and oligarchies. It's nice if the chosen representatives are efficient and skillfull, but that's not the point of the system.

[shkkmo]

I've always thought that one the the biggest benefits of democracy was to provide a mechanism of power transfer / competition between groups of elites that uses the votes of the masses rather than the blood of the masses as a medium.

[Mirioron]

The problem with the EU is that the most important institution in it is an extra step removed compared to most representational democracies. The heads of state select the Commission, not the people nor the EU Parliament. And the Commission is the only one that can propose laws.

There are two other important problems with the system as well: voter turnout and voting in blocs (country or EU party). The reason this is a problem is that the candidates campaign as individuals, but act according to what their group tells them. Sometimes they vote along what their country votes, other times they vote along the lines off what their parliamentary group tells them. But where are the interests of the actual constituents here?

[em-bee]

this shows that the only way to really achieve democracy is to get rid of any form of party or bloc. the elected candidates must only be responsible to the constituents that elected them and no-one else.

[repolfx]

this is basically the point of representative democracy!

The EU isn't a democracy or even a representative democracy. Notice how lots of people wrote to their MEPs and nothing happened other than MEPs calling their voters stupid? That's because in the EU all decisions are ultimately made by the Commission. The Commission started this, the Commission made it happen and by treaty the Commission is the only body able to actually propose changes to the law.

The EU Parliament quite literally doesn't fit the dictionary definition of Parliament. There isn't any way voters can change this law by voting, not even if every party was for changing it, because even a majority of MEPs cannot change the law. But changing the law is the entire and sole purpose of politicians, so we can observe that MEPs aren't really politicians.

A group elects someone who’s better at statecraft than the group is

That has never been part of the idea of democracy. What makes you think politicians are so great at statecraft? There are no tests they have to pass, assuming you could even make such a test to begin with. What's the definition of statecraft, even?

There's no evidence politicians are smarter or better than the average voter. That's why anyone can turn up and get votes.

Or, from the people’s perspective: elected representatives engage in awful horse-trading and disrespect their constituency’s opinions, and yet gradually everything gets better “somehow.”

For a whole lot of people in the EU things are either stagnant or getting worse. Look at the dire economic performance of Italy since joining the Eurozone: was growing, since flat.

Things don't get better because people repeatedly elect politicians who are superior to themselves. Things, by and large, get better when governments shrink and stay out of things. The fate of the eastern bloc under Soviet rule and then capitalist democratic rule shows that in action (although, now they are at risk of going backwards thanks to things like Article 13).

There are a lot of things you just can’t get done using direct democracy.

Tell that to the Swiss. Most successful country on the continent, by far.

[dane-pgp]

> There isn't any way voters can change this law by voting, not even if every party was for changing it, because even a majority of MEPs cannot change the law.

It's true that the EU Parliament doesn't quite work the way you want it to, however it does have the ability to "Censure" the EU Commission by a vote of no confidence:

http://en.euabc.com/word/151

If it did so, a new Commission President would then be nominated, which the EU Parliament could approve based on the nominee's support for a change to the law.

This would be a way of working around the fact that the EU Parliament does not formally possess legislative initiative, which you seem to think it is missing, despite the fact that the law in question was amended and approved by the parliament as part of the legislative process.

[Mirioron]

It's essentially impossible for that kind of a vote to succeed though. Requiring a two thirds majority among MEPs against the Commission is going to be very difficult, because those MEPs still have to deal with their national governments and parties at home. The Council is the one that put the Commission in place and the Council is the national governments.

[repolfx]

New President would be nominated ... by the same people who nominated the last one.

The Parliament doesn't get to choose the leader. They can only ratify or delay the decision of those who do. That makes them useless. Even if they fire the entire Commission, the Council will just immediately re-appoint a new President who has exactly the same views and policies.

This kind of "you may be a nuisance but not change anything" arrangement is everywhere in the EU's structure. It's infantilising. It says you can cry if you like and get some attention for a while, but ultimately, the decisions aren't being made by you.

[cameronbrown]

> The EU isn't a democracy or even a representative democracy.

> ...

Thank you for pointing this out.

Edit: Why is the parent comment being downvoted? All of the facts presented are quite public knowledge.

> What's the definition of statecraft, even?

A member of the old boys club who graduated from Eton college seems to be the British definition.

[namdnay]

Probably because his argument is “the commission decides everything”. Except that the commission is controlled by... the democratically elected representatives of each country! So how is that not a representative democracy?

[pessimizer]

> Why is the parent comment being downvoted?

Probably by people not reading it and having a kneejerk Brexit-related response.

[benologist]

Would you rather they iterate towards a solution or have giant corporations calling the shots?

They're just trying to fix Google's mess, like when they have to litigate to collect taxes or when the DOJ litigates to prevent colluding to depress employee wages or when customers litigate to collect their refunds. It's Google forcing new laws and litigation, the EU is much their victim as their employees, customers and users.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/05/24/2025223/google-fran...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-refund-advertisers-af...

[cameronbrown]

Article 13 is medieval era legislation. We should be undoing copyright laws, not clamping down on the most fundamental freedoms.

I say this without jest: At least the giant corporations can be held to account - I can choose not to use their services, or decide to use an adblocker. The EU can't and I can't opt out of it.

[dane-pgp]

Consumer choice can have a positive effect on giant corporations, but it can fail just as often. For example, how easy is it for average consumers to avoid websites that use tracking cookies to follow them around the web? Similarly, how many consumers care enough about the emissions of cars or power stations to base their purchasing decisions on that?

In matters such as these (and others, such as food, medicine, and transport safety), it makes more sense to have government regulation rather than relying solely on consumer pressure. Moreover, it is more efficient for businesses to have one consistent set of rules to follow, rather than a patchwork of 28 contradictory rules, and it is harder for large corporations to pressure countries if those countries are acting together as a bloc.

If you want to opt out of the EU, I'm sure there are several territories in the world that would welcome you to live there. Alternatively, you have EU protected free speech and voting rights to convince your fellow citizens that your country should end its EU membership. You just need to get enough of those citizens (and their elected representatives) to agree on what specific alternative to EU membership they want instead.

[cameronbrown]

> example, how easy is it for average consumers to avoid websites that use tracking cookies to follow them around the web?

The reason nothing has been done is because the majority are uninformed or just don't care. I'd argue we still get the better end of the deal with free as in beer content.

> Moreover, it is more efficient for businesses to have one consistent set of rules to follow, rather than a patchwork of 28 contradictory rules, and it is harder for large corporations to pressure countries if those countries are acting together as a bloc.

What do you personally think is better? A huge institution with power to regulate the markets of 28 nations, or 28 independent nations?

It's not about money. I think it's too much power concentrated into a single body. Would you prefer a business-first approach for anything else?

> EU protected free speech

Not allowing parody and remix is also an attack on my free speech.

[shkkmo]

I am confused as to your point, it is SOOOO much easier to block cookies and buy an EV than it is to get citizenship in a foreign country.

That is why EU wide regulations need to be considered with more considation for the needs of EU users and less consideration for the demands of private industry lobbyists.

[kiba]

They're just trying to fix Google's mess, like when they have to litigate to collect taxes or when the DOJ litigates to prevent colluding to depress employee wages or when customers litigate to collect their refunds. It's Google forcing new laws and litigation, the EU is much their victim as their employees, customers and users.

None of which had anything to do with Google News and publisher demands.

[jimmaswell]

I'd rather have giant corporations calling the shots than whatever's going on in Europe, yeah.

[pnako]

> The vast majority of the informed peoples of the EU campaigned

I wonder where those informed people got their information from.

[kiba]

You comment reads a bit like "the workers wanted a raise, now they're on strike and they get less money than previously, achieving the exact opposite of what they wanted to do!" It's technically true of course, but I think they hope that Google will suffer enough from this decision that they'll have to reconsider in the future. Alternatively, they hope that people will still want to get French news and will move to other websites which will accept to give money to the news organizations.

How exactly google will suffer? It seems to me that Google is the party that can afford to walk away and that the French news media cannot.

[jeremyjh]

Google makes money by exposing eyeballs to advertisements. They will have less eyeballs in the future, and get fewer revenues as a result.

[tylerl]

Google news doesn't have ads. There's no money to lose.

The whole concept France is pushing has been ludicrous all along. There's no revenue to share or for Google to lose. It's just a free service. Just free. No ads. No money.

The ads are on the search page. Not the news page.

[jeremyjh]

Google doesn't provide services that provide no benefit to Google. If people can't get the news they are used to from Google News, they will get it elsewhere, and that means less engagement with Google.

[shkkmo]

Google News leads to more news being read online. Google makes money when news is read online because Google has a monopoly on online advertising. Google ONLY makes money from Google News when users click through to read articles.

Having data on online news reading habbits is a nice bonus, but the reason Google News exists is to boost ad sales to news sites.

[IggleSniggle]

Google can show other news sources snips, which will now get better engagement from users. Unless the EU can control Google entirely, it is the French publisher that is hurt by this, not Google.

[blotter_paper]

It would be hilarious if this created a niche in the industry for French news content published outside of Europe but supported by ad content obviously tailored towards French users. Given the profitability of journalism in general, that might be a long shot.

[_the_inflator]

Nope. I side with Google. Why should they pay for Agency content brandet as high quality newspaper content? Why only newspapers? This is blackmailing google.

This is using law to grant the lobby of newspapers additional revenue. And blame Google for not abiding.

[Barrin92]

> Why should they pay for Agency content brandet as high quality newspaper content?

because they're using someone elses intellectual property in the process, and that's what this law is about. Sure, the relationship goes both ways in that it increases exposure for the newspaper, but there is a very principled case to be made that Google profits for free off the intellectual creations of third parties.

The one point I agree with in your question is "why only newspapers", I think we should systematically move towards monetisation when Google indexes, reuses and displays content from third parties and incorporates them in their products.

[sdenton4]

That sounds like an amazing barrier to entry in the search space... Want to index websites for your new search engine? Just pay every site a euro!

[Barrin92]

it's not any more of a barrier to entry than the fact that spotify pays artists money and if I want to make a competitor I'd need to do that too. I don't really understand how the idea that platforms reimburse the people whose content they use is supposed to be extraordinary.

Also there is no genuine search competition anyway, so instead of waiting another 20 years I'd just be happy if Google starts paying people for the content that they use.

[dahdum]

Spotify would have to pay artists for the right to recommend songs to users, then send those users to the artists site for purchase to be comparable.

That would be a terrible business model though. Maybe the French newspapers should join together to create a search engine of their own content, if there really is a lot of money to be made in that game.

[shkkmo]

The way that content licensing and exclusive deals work IS a huge barrier to entry for small players.

I think we need to pass legislation that prohibit exclusive content licensing and require that equivalent licensing terms are offered to all competitors (similar perhaps to rules about patent licensing when it is incorporated into a standard?)

Edit: Since Google has a near monopoly on ad networks, there is a sense in which Google already is the one paying for much of this content.

[graeme]

You're failing to consider that the EU acted utterly irrationally.

The news isn't an important business for google and it doesn't get its revenue from their.

In a strike, the employer has pressure to relent because workers have a thing the employer values.

But what does Google have at stake in this situation? Why on earth would they pay to link to news? Why are news links special?

[gmueckl]

No, a lot of politicians amd lobbyists in favor of that reform had arguments that were maybe relevant 30 years ago, completely missing how media consumption has changed. And when called out, their response was deliberately hurtful, full of contempt and belittling those who - in their view - had no effin idea what this was about when in truth, even Axel Voss, the architect of the copyright reform gave factually wrong explanations of the contents of the regulation.

The politicians who were pushing this through were deliberately breaking just about every rule of civil political discourse. This is all on the record. Such behaviour it is completely out of line, but I don't know how to counter it effectively when those responsible for it have more political power and have better contacts in the media to have their views (and, in this case, lies) reported.

[Kiro]

> but I think they hope that Google will suffer enough from this decision that they'll have to reconsider in the future.

Reconsider what? What is Google doing wrong here exactly?

[MrBuddyCasino]

> but on the other hand it's clear that many EU constituents (those who actually pay taxes and employ people in the EU) felt that something had to be done

This is exactly the problem. X was something, therefore it had to be done, although it was utterly pointless.

This is everything that’s wrong with politics.

[Mirioron]

>but on the other hand it's clear that many EU constituents (those who actually pay taxes and employ people in the EU) felt that something had to be done.

Really? Because only the Commission can propose laws and the Commission is not elected. Even MEPs get really low voter turnouts in many EU countries, because people feel that MEPs don't mean anything. I can understand it too, because MEPs seem to vote in blocs and what the people want seems to be entirely irrelevant.

[donohoe]

I agreed with EU on GDPR but I have to agree with @pavelludiq here.

It’s an understandable move by google to a short-sighted law.

I’m VERY sympathetic to publishers - I work for them but this is a BS move

[dmitrygr]

Why would Google suffer? Google News runs no ads and makes no money.

[Mountain_Skies]

Why does Google News exist? If it's to keep people using a Google property, that has value. If it's to build profiles of user interests, that has value. If it's for goodwill, that also has value.

Google believes it receives some sort of value out of their News service even if that value isn't directly in the form of advertising payments.

[shkkmo]

Google News exists so that people read more news online and Google makes more money brokering ads for online publishers. Goodwill and more data are nice benefits but have a smaller impact on Google's bottom line.

[the_mitsuhiko]

> Congratulations to the EU commission and the EU parliament on achieving the exact opposite of what they wanted to do despite being told this would happen and despite it actually already happening in Spain and Germany.

I don’t follow: what is happening is exactly what the EU wants. I fail to understand the comment here entirely. Until all countries are executing this law this is exactly what the commission predicted is going to happen.

[ekianjo]

> what is happening is exactly what the EU wants.

No, they wanted Google to pay licensing fees and all for showing snippets. That did not happen.

[elcomet]

No. They wanted google to either pay or stop displaying snippets.

[bko]

They didn't achieve the goals.

> “The negotiations were difficult, but what counts in the end is that we have a fair and balanced result that is fit for a digital Europe,” said European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip. “The freedoms and rights enjoyed by internet users today will be enhanced, our creators will be better remunerated for their work, and the internet economy will have clearer rules for operating and thriving.” The bill is expected to be formally approved by mid-April, after which European Union governments will have two years to include it in their national laws.

Take the claims one by one:

> The freedoms and rights enjoyed by internet users today will be enhanced

I'm not sure what freedom or right was enhanced. Maybe the rights of publishers not to have their content seen by users? But certainly the freedom and right of a news consumer in France was harmed as they have less access to news in a convenient fashion.

> our creators will be better remunerated for their work

This clearly didn't happen. Maybe people will click more, but Google is said to have performed experiments and found that not showing the text leads to a 45% decline in traffic to the website. Yes, they are likely bias and it might be a ruse, but considering how much internet giants focus on providing the least amount of friction and latency to users, I believe the sentiment is correct.

> and the internet economy will have clearer rules for operating and thriving

This is an odd claim because some smaller internet companies got exemptions and there was some horse trading with gas. Doesn't seem any clearer to assert publisher rights based on a case by case basis

> The deal was made possible after France and Germany proposed a compromise last week, giving smaller internet companies some exemptions from the rules. The compromise coincided with a separate deal in which France agreed to support Germany on a natural-gas pipeline with Russia, according to officials in Brussels and Berlin.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-union-agrees-to-new-co...

[raverbashing]

Well, you're absolutely right, but the law did go from a complete shitstorm to something more manageable.

> Maybe the rights of publishers not to have their content seen by users?

Well, it was always their right (as they could use robots.txt) but now Google gives them a more fine grained control over it.

Though to be honest I'm very, very happy they're trowing a fit right now. Yes, please, use the panel and take your content off of Google.

> But certainly the freedom and right of a news consumer in France was harmed as they have less access to news in a convenient fashion.

True. But they can always go to the website of their favourite news org and go from there.

[shkkmo]

> Well, it was always their right (as they could use robots.txt) but now Google gives them a more fine grained control over it.

Does it? I am pretty sure Google already provided on page directives that gives sites full control of image indexing, snippet usage and even snippet length. [0]

The differences is that now all news sites are opted-out by default, a legal agreement is required to opt in, and the force of law ensures compliance.

I don't really see how this actually does ANYTHING to help anyone except lawyers. I guess it makes it harder for small aggregators to get going...but is that really a result we wanted?

[0] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710

[phoe-krk]

No. They wanted Google to either pay or pay.

They never wanted Google to show displaying snippets, as we will shortly see when the French publishers notice the plummeting page views and issue "emergency snippet licenses" to Google in order to save themselves from their own greed.

[eps]

> Plummeting page views

Previous discussion on this had a link to the research paper that actually measured said "plummeting" in case of Spain - the decrease in traffic was well under 20%. Just FYI.

* Edited for clarity.

[Nasrudith]

Growth of 2-3% in anything you are actively work towards is the baseline success expectation as it is stagnant or declining otherwise. That is the equivalent of losing a decade's growth. Losing 20% of your salary would certainly qualify as losing 6 to 10 years of minimal growth expectation. It is twice that of a literal dictionary definition decimation. "Plummeting" is certainly not hyperbole.

[crazygringo]

Even a 10% can rightly be considered a "plummet" in many business contexts.

If a stock drops 10% in a day, that's gigantic. Considering how precarious the profitability of news organizations can be to begin with, a 10% drop that can't be reversed could be the difference between staying in business and folding, depending on how costs are structured.

If your traffic decreases by, say 10%, that's huge -- that's a plummet. (If your traffic decreases by 80%, you don't need adjectives anymore -- you're probably out of business now.)

[phoe-krk]

Could you link and/or clarify a little bit? Did their profits shrink by 20% to 80%, or by 80% to 20%?

[al_form2000]

Oh, under one fifth? Peachy.

[chrisseaton]

They wanted Google to pay. ‘Or don’t show the snippets’ was the bluff. Google called the bluff.

[eitland]

I guess publishers would only be happy if Google paid, meaning publishers bluffed EU, but not Google.

I think EU is happy with the outcome.

And the publishers deserve it.

I also think it is fair that the tech giants starts to pay, and maybe we can find a more reasonable model later.

[michaelmrose]

Why should they pay publishers for the privilege of promoting the publishers content? It's not like a snippet is a substitute for the content.

[gsich]

Everyone expected that.

[michaelmrose]

They only win in this context if people use a different search engine that does pay to show snippets.

If people still use Google to find results but have to go on just title and publication to figure out what link to click which spoiler alert they already mostly do then you have 2 net effects.

Searching for news is slightly more cumbersome and resources that do allow snippets will get slightly more clicks from people who can read both.

Who wins in that context?

[conradfr]

Except if people click the links more instead of reading only the snippets.

[michaelmrose]

This would only be likely if lack of snippets means people click more wrong links but I think prior experiences show people clicking less not more

[sacado2]

And google chose option 2, and the French government is pissed off because they expected Google to choose option 1 and give agencies free money.

[JohnStrangeII]

The directive works just fine. From the perspective of the EU commission it's perfectly fine not to scrap any content of other creators and not to make it available for free. It merely states that if you scrap content from other companies, then you have to pay for the content.

The purpose of this regulation is to protect the companies and journalists who actually assemble and write the news against a predatory business model.

[ako]

Google has determined that the best way to bring visitors to the newssites is by showing a few lines of the news item. Apparently google vistors are more likely to click on a link if they see a few lines of text.

This benefits the newssite, not google.

Those few lines function as an advertisement for the actual article. Usually companies have to pay for advertisements...

[shkkmo]

> This benefits the newssite, not google.

Since Google makes money off of most online ad sales, it often directly benefits Google as well.

[PyroLagus]

If the news site uses AdSense, which quite a few do, then yes. But I'm not sure if Google's extra profit is that significant. Especially when compared to the benefits the news sites get.

[jhall1468]

If that was their purpose, then they failed miserably. At least they'll find that out soon enough, as page views to those news sites are almost certainly going to plummet. And when they do it will be even more clear that Googles "predatory business model" was helping get these journalists and companies views.

[JohnStrangeII]

Protection by enforcing applicable copyright law, not in the sense of "helping someone out".

The news companies can opt to give away their content to Google for free. The directive merely gave these companies more choice, by stopping illegal web scraping without asking first.

[jhall1468]

They already had the ability to opt-out of Google scraping their articles. They already had a choice, just like they did in Germany. And the German news organizations realized views plummeted after they did this (https://searchengineland.com/german-publisher-group-sues-goo...).

This was never about choice, which they've always had, this has always been about both having their cake and eating it to. When French publishers inevitably see their traffic plummet, they will almost certainly sue Google for it.

[zmix]

If I am the reason for you, to have customers, then you could be a bit more relaxed about the fact, that I show a one- or two liner from your content. Because, that is all a snippet gives.

You want to play a role in the game? Well, then do your bidding...

[Semaphor]

No, not even close. Just like in Spain, where they passed a law forbidding publishers to allow google to show snippets for free.

[raverbashing]

Except in the EU version, enforcing the press publishing rights is optional (optional to the news org)

[amelius]

Is this true?

[sdenton4]

Summary article:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-r...

"Yet the report points out that 'substitution effect' is very small in comparison to the 'market expansion effect' that aggregators cause. According to the research, aggregation services reduce search times and allow readers to consume more news overall. The NERA analysis finds that in the first few months of 2015 after the introduction of the law, publishers saw traffic fall on average more than six percent, while smaller publications saw it drop by 14 percent drop."

[Oletros]

Yes,and Google shot down Google News.

But Google was not the worst affected, smaller news aggregators like Meneame suffered more because they didn't have the finnancial muscle to pay even if they wanted

[kd5bjo]

We don’t know how this plays out yet. This first step was quite predictable, but its effects on the overall news media landscape will take months to unwind. Will this increase the ad revenue for news sites because of increased clickthrough rates? Will it push them towards obscurity because their reporting is less available? Will it make no meaningful difference whatsoever?

[sbx320]

Google did the same thing in Germany after a similar national version was introduced. News sites quickly noticed a significant decrease in visitors coming from Google. They then attempted to sue Google to force them to list results with snippets AND also pay for it. Courts quickly ruled against that, so news sites just decided to allow Google to list the full results again.

The end result is that the law meant to work against Google actually benefited them. News sites cannot afford to not give Google a free license, but smaller search engines face a big issue.

I highly expect it to pan out the same way again.

[amelius]

But what was the effect for the consumer?

Did they read less news? Was that a problem?

Did they read other news?

Did they visit more smaller news sites as opposed to a few large ones?

[Krasnol]

There was no effect on the consumer who uses google as the law was supposed to be installed August 1st 2013 but the main publishers who lobbied for the law granted google a free license 2 days before the deadline.

As far as I know google is now the only search engine who has this free license.

It's quite funny because those publishers advertised the law with some heavy criticism towards google. The whole thing was some kind of "anti-google-law". In the end they made them stronger as other portals and search engines have not been granted a free license. I always wondered if this whole thing was not intended this way to give them a better standing on google news in the end.

The EU could have learned something here just like the lobby who pushed for it again.

I'd assume the result for those who do not use google to look for news will find smaller "news" sites. Especially those who feed them fake news because every serious news site has their license rights protected by the VG Wort.

A lose - lose for everybody.

[sbx320]

Axel Springer AG (who were the primary lobbyist for the law) actually attempted to use the law against Google in late 2014 for four of their biggest sites. It took two weeks for them to give Google a free license again. They cited a 40% loss of clicks from Google and a 80% loss from Google News as the reason.

[Krasnol]

Ah yes, you're right I remember that. It made some funny headlines.

[makomk]

It's not just the EU and its institutions pushing that narrative either. For example, before the European elections the BBC ran an article about all the great things the European Parliament has done which gave it credit for this and described the controversy as follows: "Supporters say the rule helps to ensure that artists, musicians and other creators are fairly compensated. But tech companies say it will destroy user-generated content." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48024400

No mention of the fact that MEPs had very little to do with the contents of the law, which was mostly shaped by shady back-room dealings between the French and German government, or of the concerns non-corporate-affiliated artists and content creators had about it screwing them over, or the bizarre voting fiasco.

[raverbashing]

While the BBC is certainly decaying in quality and balance with each passing day, I think those deals might have surfaced after the vote happened.

> No mention of the fact that MEPs had very little to do with the contents of the law, which was mostly shaped by shady back-room dealings between the French and German government

Actually a lot of MEPs participated in the discussions and their contents (which doesn't mean what you're mention didn't happen, of course it did)

[pas]

Could you please elaborate on the voting fiasco thing?

[makomk]

Supposedly there were enough MEPs who were opposed the copyright changes that they should've been able to block them (which is pretty remarkable and almost never happens), but due to the confusing way the vote was organised some MEPs "accidentally" pressed the wrong button and voted for it instead, causing it to be passed. It's not clear whether this was in fact an accident or just plausible deniability.

[timwaagh]

It may be counterproductive but in a way those publishers always held the rights to their own work. Consequently if they want to prevent Google from showing snippets they should be able to. But maybe that should be opt out, rather than opt in. I expect most of them to request Google to use snippets again before very long in any case.

[zmix]

> Consequently if they want to prevent Google from showing snippets they should be able to.

They were!

From https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en

  <meta name="googlebot" content="..., ..." /> 
  These meta tags control the behavior of search engine crawling and indexing.
  
  nosnippet - Don't show a text snippet or video preview from being shown in 
  the search results. For video, a static image will be shown instead, if 
  possible. Example: <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">
  
  max-snippet:[number] - Limit the text snippet length for this page to [number] 
  characters; specify 0 for no snippet or -1 to allow any snippet length.

[realusername]

They already can, they just leave the meta tags with an empty string and nothing will show up.

[kozhevnikov]

It should be a simple robots.txt setting (i.e. indexed but without snippets) available to any publisher and content creator in any country.

[zmix]

It is already. And in addition to that, since 'robots.txt' is being considered to broad and too 'out of time', Google offers meta tags, that their bot evaluates. They did this long time before the EU direction.

[dahauns]

But there already is? That's exactly what the

  nosnippet

meta-tag is for.

[pteraspidomorph]

There's been legislative elections since and not only was turnout a little better than usual, the major traditional alliances lost a lot of seats in the european parliament to the smaller less conventional ones on both sides of the spectrum. Still a long way to go but baby steps.

[jorvi]

I mean, let's not pretend this only happens in Europe. Pinterest sued Google and got the amazing 'view image' button taken away. Didn't even take something as mighty as federal government interference.

[kinkrtyavimoodh]

It was Getty Images that sued Google.

Otoh Pinterest taking over Google Image search results with useless results is nothing short of malware.

[bsaul]

I'm really on your side. However, note that we (assuming you're european too) are in such a shity place because we've got 0 internet giants in Europe, and so we have really no good option between tax or laissez-faire

[threatofrain]

A large portion of savvy web users are ready to switch search engines on a snap if a superior value proposition comes along; if you build it (well) they will come. The same is 10x as true for news sources.

[ativzzz]

You underestimate how much higher this value proposition needs to be for people to switch, and you overestimate the amount of savvy web users.

[threatofrain]

Can Apple switch to alternative search such as DuckDuckGo or Bing without substantially upsetting customers? Perhaps with nobody really noticing or producing fanfare? I think the difference between DDG and Google is the difference in what is sufficiently compelling for customers to feel.

Similarly, can Apple quite visibly switch map providers without much difference to customers?

As for news sources I suspect people are already very promiscuous, which is part of the problem.

[mrep]

All the talk about Apple being all about privacy is 100% marketing. There is no way apple is going to give up $12 billion dollars a year in revenue [0] to not default to google for search.

[0]: https://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-en...

[bsaul]

There’s a reason why states have rules against monopolistic companies. Once a company reaches a critical mass in one sector, it becomes almost impossible to create competition, for many various reasons.

But you’re right, old european countries really never tried to think seriously about what makes them lagging so much behind the US and China.

[michaelmrose]

By a large portion do you mean virtually no real users? People are lazy.

[TulliusCicero]

People will absolutely switch if another search engine is substantially better. But that's hard to do because Google isn't a lazy incumbent, their search is being continually worked on and improved.

Mostly other search engines seem to try to compete based on privacy or something, and while that's nice, it's not as tangible as superior core search functionality.

Like, DuckDuckGo isn't a bad search engine, and for a lot of things it seems about equally good. But "comparably good most of the time" doesn't make for a very compelling case to switch.

[buboard]

Its not like the alternative is better. They have the choice of slowly bleeding to death vs severing the hand. Its not clear which is best.

There are upsides, eg google news will stop being an option for news

[workaway]

Having fewer options for getting news is an upside?

[buboard]

How is gnews “more options”. They dont write news, they aggregate

[kansface]

It’s aggregation that is the valuable part, not the news or we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place and it would be newspapers that took over the world instead of google.

[buboard]

Aggregation of a product that is devalued the more you aggregate it. Inevitably it kills the product and you have nothing to aggregate. Google is doing that (sucking up all the ad revenue) to all kinds of publishers and i expect to see more of this.

[pas]

How is Google sucking up adrev.? Publishers get revenue from Google, or they can manage ad sales however they want.

They times have changed, and it seems going back is not an option. Before Google big publishers were the default for many people, either on paper or online. Now publishers are in the headline business. Also if they write good things, people will read it still.

They lost some/much of their network effect. And sure, we can say G is sucking up revenue, but they also make it possible to advertise for whatever keyword you want, much more effectively, than publishers did. In this sense G is just a better paper, truck, road, printing press and ad-sales-house in one. Pretty hard to beat it.

[workaway]

More options "for getting news".

An aggregator is an option for getting news.

[thunderbong]

I'm sorry, I don't have a clue what you're talking about.

[lumberjack]

Why is this bad? The further away Google is from news coverage, the better. They have the power to be extremely manipulative.

[easytiger]

This. The EU proxy war against Ireland thrown in with this utterly corrupt approach to information companies is an utter embarrassment and fully demonstrative of the complete lack of oversight of a tiny handful of people.

[tannhaeuser]

Excuse me, you find it ok that Google et al get all the ad money by republishing and publishers and content creators get nothing? And even go so far as spinning this into an EU corruption story, where the only alternative, and the one we're living through right now, is to rely on a monopolist for news?

[signal11]

Content creators get click throughs. And while I’m not sure if this is specific to me in the UK, news.google.co.uk has no ads.

Google News presents an aggregated view of online news. Because of Google’s reach, news.google gets a lot of page views and results in a lot of click-throughs to the actual publisher. Facebook is a similar source of traffic although that’s driven by social sharing. In both cases, publishers benefit a lot assuming they can monetise those page views.

I’m not a big fan of Google but Google News isn’t the “bad guy” here.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Could you please explain to me how Google is making money from showing a brief excerpt from a linked website. Especially "all the money". Before you answer, please consider where most of Google's revenue comes from. Is it from showing things on their search page or is it from their ad network? Making money from the latter requires people to actually click through to the site.

Maybe I am missing something, so please enlighten us.

[simias]

In order to display ads Google needs users to use its websites. Google being able to offer news snippets on his website is a feature that drives traffic and therefore drives ad impressions and therefore revenue.

It's like saying that Google doesn't benefit from GMail because people reading mail doesn't make them money.

I guess an other way to answer this question would be to say: if Google doesn't care at al about previews, why did they develop the feature in the first place and then fought against these laws instead of just removing it as soon as people started complaining? Clearly they do deem them valuable enough to go through this whole charade.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Those impressions are not from the search site but come into play once people click on a link. Google has an incentive to have people click on links. Including news sites. Especially news sites that come with tons of ads.

Let's say I blog about topics a lot of other people blog about. Let's say there was a Google Blogs. I would want Google to post a relevant snippet of my blog post to help me stand out from all the other links. And Google would happily comply, because this makes those who bought ads that now get displayed on my blog happy, and Google can charge them more money.

I'd say I would have to have a very twisted and self absorbed mindset to believe that Google is stealing from me for posting a relevant excerpt from my blog. But maybe that's just me.

[kd5bjo]

> Google has an incentive to have people click on links.

This is true only insofar as it incentivizes people to come to Google in the first place. If Google can directly provide the information that the user is looking for, then it gains no benefit from sending the user elsewhere instead.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Again: Google's revenue comes from ads. Those ads are not on their search site. They are on the sites people click. How can you still believe, Google has no benefit from sending people to those sites?!

Second, in most cases those previews are too small to provide the information the user was looking for.

Your argument is based on false assumptions.

[tannhaeuser]

Since you're asking so politely: Google is in the business of targetted advertisement. It doesn't matter whether they're sending you to a website; they profit from your attention and the info you give them about yourself. The insane amount of money they extract won't benefit content creators and anyway it ending in the hands of a quasi-monopoly can't be in the public interest.

[AnonymousPlanet]

> It doesn't matter whether they're sending you to a website;

It does matter for this discussion because this is about Google showing two sentences of an article as preview. And the accusation is that Google somehow steals money from publishers by doing so. I don't like Google, but this accusation is just outright nonsense.

> The insane amount of money they extract won't benefit content creators and anyway it ending in the hands of a quasi-monopoly can't be in the public interest.

Ah, so it is a matter of principle to you. Taking away from the beast is a good thing. Off with it's head!

It nearly sounds like you think that no matter the means, it is always good to just hurtle laws at the quasi-monopoly.

That is a dangerous stance, tannhaeuser, because mindlessly throwing stupid laws at the beast might make it stronger, just like it does in this case. And the smaller competition might be crushed before it even existed. But, hey, at least you could take that fork and torch for a spin!

I'm all for cutting down Google, Facebook and Microsoft a couple of notches in favour of smaller competition, but I'm dead against using stupid or even dangerous means. This law was put into place by people who hate the internet, and they would set it all aflame if they could. Don't blindly follow destroyers.

[tannhaeuser]

Respectfully, I disagree with the rhetoric that this law takes away from the "internet" when the situation is that a handful of oligopolies extract all economic value, while content creation has become a race to the bottom. US antitrust enforcement has had their chance for upholding an "ordoliberal" stance like you're expressing here, but they let Google buy DoubleClick and YouTube, and let Facebook buy Whatsapp to form monopolies instead, and I don't think the rest of the world has to standby and watch their publishing industries being destroyed.

[AnonymousPlanet]

The publishing industries are not being destroyed by what you think. Your comment implies that the old publishing industries would be okay if Google or Facebook did not exist. That is not true.

There is a much deeper issue at hand here. The publishing industries make money off of information. Information has decisively different properties from physical objects. I have an apple. I give it to you, I don't have it anymore. You give it back, now you don't have the apple. I can hand out apples from my box and count how many I had, how many I have left. That gives me the exact amount of my apples out there. You can use these properties as the basis of a business model.

Information does not have the properties of physical objects. And therefore you shouldn't be able to use the same business model for selling apples for selling information. Yet throughout most of the 20th century exactly this was done. It was possible because the information was mostly stuck to the media it was sold on. It was hard to get the information off that medium and copy it to another without losing something. This made it possible to use physical object business models with information.

But that was all a fantasy. And this fantasy collapsed when the media moved to computers. For music, e.g., that was about 25 years ago. Half a century ago.

However, a huge chunk of the publishers and artists are still living in their fantasy. They don't see that they are deluding themselves when they demand their old business models to still work. For them, its the internet that is at fault, not their incomplete grasp of reality. And the big scapegoat is the internet.

If those publishers could, they would burn down the internet in a second and replace it with something they control in order to rise again as the oligopolies they once were. They yearn to remove the ability from small content creators to independently publish. They would like to build their old schemes like GEMA and VG-Wort into the internet. This is at the core of why these laws have been put into place. And that is why I believe my rhetoric is well placed.

If you look closely, you will see that those publishers and artist who moved on, beyond the fantasy, are not the ones endorsing these laws. Because they know that they are not under threat by the internet or by how Google shapes their Search site. The adversaries here are Facebook or Spotify, or the way Youtube is starting to cater towards big publishers over small content creators. But this is a different battle.

I believe that if we let the old publishers control the fight against oligopolies, we will just have the old ones back in the end, and the internet will be poorer for it. I have the feeling, the press has pulled people like you already to their side with their constant barrage of negativity on everything internet.

I don't want to discourage you from taking up arms, but please be more careful with whom you are standing on the barricades.

[shkkmo]

Let's say Google has a user on the Google News page and has a couple of levers they can pull to control if that User clicks through to read the content or only skims headlines and some snippets.

Given that there are no ads on Google News and Google makes money from most online ad sales, what reason would Google have to limit click throughs?

Clicking on am article gives Google more data and increases the chances that Google will make some money from ad sales.

Google definitely wants Google News to be the starting point for news reading habbits, but Google definitely also wants it's readers to click through and view news articles.

There are plenty of anti-competitive practices by Google to address. This simply is not one of them and arguably does more to shore up Google against competitors given that Google has a stronger ability to force publishers to grant Google access. Publishers already had full opt-out control over how Google uses their content and smaller aggregators were free to ignore those meta headers. Now smaller aggregators must convince publishers to opt-in or face legal consequences.

This law is just simply idiotic unless your only goal was to help Google News compete in Europe.

[Kiro]

> and content creators get nothing?

Axel Springer had to revert because their traffic and revenues plummeted. With your logic it wouldn't even have affected them.

[sacado2]

Strange to hold such a position on a news aggregator like HN.

[PyroLagus]

Well, to be fair. Everyone on here just reads the headlines and then the comments.

[tannhaeuser]

Except there are no snippets on HN, just a title and a link.