[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.

[endorphone]

This seems extraordinarily unlikely if you know the French.

[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?

[cameronbrown]

Correct - in theory.

In practice, MEPs are told who to vote for by their advisors. Who had even heard of Ursula von der Leyen until she was voted in?

[Mirioron]

So, if the prime minister of your country delegates all of their power to a private company (or group of non-elected people) then you'd still consider that to be a representative democracy? Especially when the only one that is allowed to propose laws and propose amendments would be that same company?

I think it's a question of how many steps removed the decision makers are from elected officials.

[pessimizer]

> Why is the parent comment being downvoted?

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

[raverbashing]

Or maybe reading it and not getting taken by spin and misinformation

[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.