Facebook and Google are butting heads with traditional news publishers. This story isn’t new in Australia, we were really the focal point after our previous government introduced the News Media Bargaining Code and for one day, no news publishers appeared on Facebook. But this story has expanded beyond Australia.
This year, Google changed its search results for Canadians. No longer can Canadians find local publishers on Google products after the Canadian government introduced a similar law to Australia. And it is not just new government regulations. Google has faced lawsuits from publishers in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Germany, France and Belgium.
These lawsuits are interesting. Some may argue that news publishers are biting the hand that feeds them. Google is the biggest source of traffic for all of these publishers and every publisher now has a team that specialise in the dark art of SEO (search engine optimisation).
In a recent lawsuit, Gannett, one of America’s largest publishers, explained why publishers are suing.
“Today, online digital advertising is a $200 billion business – a nine-fold increase since 2009,” the suit said. “Yet, despite the opportunity for publishers to produce more news content and earn more revenue, news publications’ advertising revenue has declined by nearly 70% over the same timeframe.”
Further, Gannett allege that since 2009 more than 20% of all newspapers in the United States have closed and the circulation of the remaining daily and weekly newspapers have decreased by more than 40%.
Google, on the other hand, argue that they send at least 24 billion search queries to news publishers websites each month and that publishers receive 90% of the ad revenue generated through their websites. They argue they are a partner, not a predator.
Either way, this story isn’t going anywhere. News publishers continue to decline as Google and Facebook take more of the advertising market. We should expect to see more and more clashes, especially as new artificial intelligence chatbots deliver information directly to users which in turn take away valuable clicks to news publishers websites.
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