Is this where Google gets to pretend that their news aggregation is about news or profit and not about running social experiments to see what tracks public interest or being in a position to shape public opinion by surfacing the news it chooses but also without paying for content?
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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Even so, there is a societal interest in objective news being available to the public, which means that search engines should be required to carry such content, profitable or not. All the more so due to Google's monopolistic grip on the search engine market.
This was more a stunt because France is demanding Google pay to link to news sites. It's the opposite of whether search engines should be required to list them
If that's what the French want, then it's Google's obligation to comply and simply adjust advertising rates as needed.
Google is pointing out that the news sites need google more than google needs the news sites.
This sort of thing happens every once in a while; some country's news organizations think that google should have to pay them for the privilege of helping people find their sites. Google responds by blacklisting news sites from that country. The news sites suffer more than google does, and they reverse the decision.
That's a symptom of Google holding a monopoly over search results.
Real reporting will always cost more to produce than AI-generated propaganda, and if the former has a paywall and the latter doesn't, people will inevitably end up reading the news that takes the least effort to produce, to the detriment of actual news reporting.
Requiring Google to both carry such content and pay for it at least ensures that it has an even footing with websites seeking to push propaganda instead.
I think it's problematic to require an organization to do something and then charge for it. It's one thing if they do something of their own volition and then are required to pay
I think they're setting up to negotiate not paying. I don't think people should depend on Google to provide a social good at their cost
The problem is that society has transitioned to a point where most people essentially go to Google and Facebook for all their information. Given the monopolistic power of such platforms on public opinion, there is a very strong societal interest to ensure that actual news, not merely the propaganda of the highest bidder, is what people have access to.
The responsibility of Google to pay for it can be argued, but as real reporting will always cost more to produce than AI slop pushed by propagandists, there is arguably a public interest in that as well. The alternative is legitimate news more often than not ending up with more ads and paywalls than propaganda, which will just result in more people reading sources based on less reliable reporting.
I don't know. I go to news portals or aggregates or feeds for news. Do people actually just type "news" into Google? I suppose for specific events, but I could actually see it being true that news searches weren't making up much of the activity. The way it's going to be is subscription based or publicly funded for anything worthwhile