

Google offers cash support to Europe's news groups - tpatke
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32486019

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kolme
This is terrible. So Google is trying to get out of the monopoly accusations
by bribing the mainstream media. They will make a deal and Google will get its
monopole, and the media too.

I don't know if anyone here heard about the "Google tax" in Spain [1], but
here are my worst fears: Google will consolidate its monopole, and the
mainstream press too.

Here's how it went in Spain. One could go to Google News to get a glance of
the news. One could find mainstream press there, international or otherwise,
alongside with independent media and bloggers.

So the government in Spain (or, actually, the media lobby?) creates a law
tailored to tax Google, and Google just cancels the service. How did that turn
out?

People go now directly to the mainstream media sites, and independent media
are now completely out of the game. Mainstream papers lost some readers, but
made the competency almost invisible in the process.

If this trend goes on, and Google and the mainstream media make "peace deals",
it means the same big players as always will get a monopoly on Google
services, while Google will secure popular contents for their own services
(Google News, Android News widgets, and so on).

We all lose in media plurality and independence. In the future we will be
worse informed.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_tax)

~~~
paganel
Yes, they (Google) basically paid them off.

What's interesting is that I don't see Bild in the list of newspapers backing
this, and the word is that one of the main entities fighting against Google is
Axel Springer, Bild's publisher, which has enormous influence on German
politicians. And, as it happens, right now German politicians have quite a big
influence on what what gets decided in Brussels.

Anyway, IMHO the traditional printed press is fighting a losing battle, not
against Google, but against technological change, and they kind of know it, at
least the smart guys among them have started to realize that. Long term they
cannot realistically compete against the likes of Buzzfeed, Twitter statuses,
YT videos and targeted sub-reddits. For example and despite all its faults,
/r/syriancivilwar is miles ahead of traditional media when it comes to
reporting on the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

~~~
thirdsun
Yes, those publishers have an uphill battle, no doubt. However short,
meaningless articles that just try to be there first won't be the path to
success. Of course, Twitter, reddit and others are miles ahead when it comes
to reporting things first. The problem is that many outlets still try to
package what could easily be one liners or 2 bullet points into whole
articles. These things barely have the substance of half a headline. There
simply isn't much value in this kind of reporting.

Where they actually could make a difference is longform reports - the kind of
articles The New Yorker and others are famous for. Connecting the dots and
painting the big picture with lots of details - and reporting in time isn't an
issue here. For these stories it's probably recommended to take more time,
extensive investigation and some distance to reflect on early assumptions and
speculation. This is something that still can't be easily done by just anyone.

The days of needing two dozen tabloids daily at the newsstand are gone and
there's no need to save them.

------
cultureulterior
Anyone else think of usenet when they saw the headline?

~~~
riffraff
I did, and for a brief beautiful moment I thought usenet would become
mainstream again (and google groups would magically disappear).

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pjc50
Note that Murdoch is listed as not participating in this.

News barely makes any money. The only people that have made it pay directly
are low-latency financial services: Thompson-Reuters and Bloomberg.

This makes it absolutely rife with people buying their way to influence.
Rupert Murdoch is the big example, but the Telegraph is currently imploding
under this pressure as well (owned by Barclay brothers, cancelling articles
unfavourable to HSBC).

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k-mcgrady
"Google bribes European news groups".

~~~
skj
News groups bribe European law-makers, European law-makers put the thumb
screws to Google, Google covers the cost of the bribes originally made by the
news groups to loosen the screws.

It's a pretty solid business model on the news groups' part.

Edit: Meh, this is clearly an unfounded conspiracy theory, so I won't stand
behind it. But the laws are fairly confusing when looking at the facts, which
causes me to grab onto any explanation that I can make sense of.

------
kornakiewicz
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baksheesh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baksheesh)

------
riffraff
to be fair, this seems a still tiny selection, i.e. Les Echos (FR), FAZ & Die
Zeit (DE), Financial Times&The Guardian (UK), NRC Media (NL), El Pais (ES), La
Stampa (IT).

As long as this is not an exclusive/restrictive agreement I don't think it's
bad.

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makeitsuckless
Well, at least that kills any argument of Google just being an unbiased
aggregator.

Bloody hell, there have been military coups that have tried to take control of
the media in more subtle ways than this...

