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by HWR_14 1316 days ago
> The NYT is in the advertising business. Google, Facebook, et al are direct competitors.

The NYT is in the "providing content to lure people to advertisers" business. They don't sell ads to third parties. They could be very symbiotic with Google, for example. If Google was searching their content, bringing readers in, and supplying ads. But, instead, Google scrapes their content and helps people never visit their site at all.
1 comments
doorman2 1316 days ago
> The NYT is in the "providing content to lure people to advertisers" business.

What does that mean? The NYT sells ads, i.e. you can pay the NYT to have your advertisement shown in the NYT. Google sells ads, i.e. you can pay Google to have your advertisement shown in Google results. The NYT and Google sell the same thing. They are competitors.

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HWR_14 1316 days ago
The NYT's business model is to sell their customer's eyeballs to advertisers. While Google does that with search results, they have a big arm that sells random third party eyeballs to advertisers, and then splits the money with the site supplying the eyes. I would characterize the first of Google's businesses and the NYT business as "providing content" and the second as "advertising".

In fact, the NYT outsources their ads to Amazon's advertising business.

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doorman2 1316 days ago
Google's first party platforms (Search and YouTube) account for 85% of ad revenue [0]. Search alone accounts for 72%. I'm not really sure how AdSense is relevant to the discussion. Google is clearly a huge competitor to the NYT.

[0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204422...

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