Google … should pay for media content generated in Australia, which they serve up in search results every day.
As a theoretical proposition, I fundamentally disagree with this. I can see why Google described it as “breaking the internet” (although they really mean “breaking the web”). I don’t know whether anyone has described it as a “Link Tax” but you could also describe it so.
It raises the question as to …
who are the content generators who get paid? why don’t I get paid when Google serves up a link to one of my web sites in its search results?
who are the linkers who have to pay? why don’t I have to pay if one of my web sites links to one of the content generators who get paid?
As a practical matter it may be workable i.e. just have the Big Content Generators getting paid by the Big Linkers and leave everyone else out of this regime.
However bad ideas have a habit of expanding; and anything that treats Big Companies differently from little companies has a habit of being used to entrench the market dominance of Big Companies and hence isn’t necessarily in the long term interests of consumers. (That applies on both sides, Big Content Generators and Big Linkers.)
In all of the above commentary I am only talking about search results. I totally agree that news aggregators should have to pay (or stop doing it).
I am rather perplexed why social media is even in there as far as being a Big Linker - since Facebook doesn’t actually link to anything, users do and it would be totally lame if Facebook had to pay each time I linked to a Big Content Generator. (The fact that Facebook may negotiate a fixed annual “licence” fee that covers all the links that users will post throughout the year is beside the point.)
I’m yet to understand how any of this changes the internet from a place dominated by one big search provider to one where there are no dominant providers. If Google agrees to certain terms, all we appear to be getting is more of the same. Except Google has to use some of the revenue from advertising and selling consumer data to support a select group of news publishers.
Aside from the fact Google holds not quite 100% of the search market, it also holds the lions share of advertising. That’s because Google is in near total control of what consumers see. Typically at least twice before they get to any possibility of real content. If you are into marketing there are many more eyes across the search and results pages than on the pages of the linked content.
Google can also add value to advertisers through it’s analytics, IE spying on the consumers using Google. Any site a user of Google chooses to select has none of that data available unless they choose to pay for it. Further the site the user is directed to is really only able to collect in it’s own right analytics that track the user within their small environment.
Is the unanswered question, how do we ensure that there can always be a choice of effective alternative search engines, such that Google will never be the only choice?
The epic failure of political leadership has enabled Google to not only dominate the market place. It’s allowed Google to define the internet to it’s own advantage. Is defining all the content data Google has collected really ‘common property’? IE data that Google cannot hold to it’s exclusive benefit and another way of looking for a solution.
Is Choice Community at risk? There are many posts by members on this site that link to news stories, and the site provides a search function on posted content.
Others cut and paste and quote news content.
Should Choice pay news content providers a fee, and maybe levy a charge on all posters who have a link in their content to news sites, or use quoted cut and pasted content, to cover the cost?
Sounds silly maybe, but there seems to be in my view a mountain of hypocricy in some opinions on this issue.
Big bad Google. They make zillions, so make them pay. Everyone else, free is fair.
As an experiment, I have easily changed my default search engine in Chrome browser settings from Google to Bing. The browser settings also know about Yahoo, Duckduckgo and Ecosia. I reckon most users would easily adjust if Google search went away.
Except Choice does not earn or make income from the community. Anyone can access for free, and those who sign up can post to it.
I could suggest those sites linked might like to offer something in return to Choice. Impractical though in that too would not be a without perceived bias, or open to manipulation. I like it just the way it is.
The issue is really not so much that news providers content appears on Google search (they want that), but that Google has paid advertising on their search site results, and companies actually pay big money to get their results at the top of the listings.
It is a money making method that has disrupted their old business model. Too bad. Goodbye and good riddance RM.
Basically, its self inflicted. They want to be at the top of search results, so they use analytics etc but then don’t want to share that space. If they are serious about dispensing with google they need to stop “googling x”, they need to stop using google analytics and advertising, and they need to bow out of google cookies. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They cannot have it both ways. Cake…eat…
And FFS those of you who use “google” instead of “search” or “web search”, STOPPIT AT ONCE. You too, are part of the problem.
An interesting article regarding another search engine which failed to affect Google.
In June 2009, I read an article regarding a regional NSW uni which claimed that Google was a dumb search engine and that they were developing the world’s first smart search engine.
I cannot find any mention of it, even with Google.
To beat Google you have a lot of “momentum” to overcome. If a new search engine starts up it first has to accumulate all the needed indexing, bot or bots to scrape the Web, and the data to be stored and sorted. This makes most new startups in the unenviable position of not being very useful for quite some time so creating the need for users to still use the older and more featured search engines such as Bing or Google.
One way to do so in the beginning is to siphon results from the bigger engines, but that reliance at some point needs to be designed out. Who is brave enough and big enough to take on that task?
Another search engine that promises no storage of your searches or data is https://Swisscows.com
The alternative may be for the creation of national catalogues that serve as a collection point (aggregator). Rather than relying on scraping the web, design the system such that the owners of web accessible content post the necessary index and link details through a suitable front end tool to the National catalogue. Yes, it might create a ‘white web’ if properly managed, and it could force Google to pay to add those links to it’s resource list.
Isn’t the reality there is ‘no free lunch’ when it comes to the web as a resource? The choice to pay visibly for what we need, or to pretend we’re not paying for something that has a real cost to provide?
Google and Facebook know how to succeed by convincing us of the second.
In 2009, Google was pretty much just a dumb search engine. What gave it its future was everything else it added. Gmail, news (back then it was republishing) and other odds and sods. How many people do you know who were internet connected back then? Of my friends, maybe 2 or 3, the rest just werent into it. But then that happened… and “googling” became synonymous with “searching”. The more people used it, the more businesses wanted to be up there in the top hits (how long has it been since you did a search unrelated to business, and did not get what you needed on page 1?) and the explosion continued. We are all responsible for what it has become.
REally? I went to the wayback machine to have a look at the last update in december 2009 and its different.
[edit]. I just recalled that before google bought it, dejanews.com was the thing. Google bought a lot of other services and made them its own. I think it built gmail from the ground up (but I could be wrong). google groups was built on something else, and I can’t remember what… (now going back to the 1990s, I guess)
A bit off-topic, but some may be interested in this potted history of search. I had completely forgotten about Lycos and Altavista (which was my pre-google fave) Archie, Veronica and gopher were another country!
Google did four things in the search engine application field that led to their dominance.
Firstly, their search on crawled and indexed Web information used an algorithm called ‘page rank’, which gave far better results than existing search engines that really did give dumb results that required a lot of scrolling and refining of search terms to get what was wanted. Google really was a huge improvement on the likes of Altavista and Yahoo at the time in 1998. It took off.
Secondly, Google commercialised their product due to its popularity by encouraging businesses to pay to get their site information prominent in the search results. They put paid ads on their search page. Nobody else seems to have thought about doing this apparently.
Thirdly, they built lots of free applications into the Google site. Word processor, spreadsheet, sources of free information, calculator, etc
They also kept a history of your searches and took note of your location, so search results became even more relevent and targeted to you.
By this time almost all the older search engines were pretty much dropped into a distant also ran status.
Fourthly, Google developed a Unix variant for mobile touchscreen devices called Android as a competitor to Apple. They made it basically free to use by any device maker, and today it is 75% of the mobile market. Chrome is the standard Browser, and Google search is the default search.
Actually, I’ll add a fifth. Google site was fun. Their graphic on the screen for a date or person or event.
The ‘google bombing’ exercises were fun to find. My favorite was in 2003 when Bush ordered the US to invade Iraq, a search for ‘weapons of mass destruction’, led to a top search hit of a fake 404 error screen, weapons of mass destruction not found.
while Google was still fun directions from (example) an address in Houston TX USA to one in Melbourne VIC AU presented an accurate road trip from Houston to San Franciso where you got into a kayak and rowed to the Hawaiian Islands, drove across them, back into the kayak to Japan; kanji directions driving through the Japanese archipelago and back into the kayak w/English, to Darwin where one got on the road south to Melbourne.
This is a fine distinction to make. There are countless web sites in the world that are “ad funded” and some of those may link to Big Content Generator content.
I assume that, somewhere in the fine print (which I haven’t looked at or even seen), there are exclusions that mean that Choice is not a Big Linker.
Choice might be at risk from future scope creep.
It is perhaps too easy just to blame the government. There are many factors at play. You can even ask the question as to whether sufficient legislation already exists, since Google clearly has a “substantial degree of power in a market” such that the ACCC should be taking an interest.
Shouldn’t we the people (although not me) also accept some of the blame? If more Australians refused to use any Google services then the problem would never have arisen? It’s the Microsoft problem all over again.
Exactly.
Google’s model and indeed the model of much of the internet is a model of … provide a service that looks as if it is free but in reality the true cost is just hidden. You are paying for Google’s service with the details of your life.
Probably. I suppose “do we need to regulate?” is a much bigger question, covering different types of behaviour and different types of service, and potentially going into vaguer issues, whereas this is discussing specific (proposed / upcoming / threatened) legislation.
Yes. I don’t think we should be under the illusion that any of the companies involved here are being altruistic. Not Google. Not News. Not Microsoft. They are all looking after their own interests.
