
Google Made $4.7B from the News Industry in 2018, Study Says - woodgrainz
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/09/business/media/google-news-industry-antitrust.html
======
crazygringo
This is one of the flimsiest things I've ever seen in my life.

Turns out the number is _entirely_ based on a quote in 2006 from Fortune
editor Jon Fortt:

“The online giant figures that Google News funnels readers over to the main
Google search engine, where they do searches that do produce ads. And that’s a
nice business. Think of Google News as a $100 million search referral machine”
[1]

He claims he got the number from Marissa Meyer at a tech conference lunch
session, but without quoting her directly, and there's zero detail about
whether it is supposed to represent revenue or a long-term valuation of the
business.

Then the "study" says $100M was 0.7% of Google's revenue in 2006, and assumes
it's still proportionally the same, which makes it $4.7B. [2]

Which is completely ridiculous. Google is a vastly larger and more diversified
company now, but more importantly hardly needs News to drive users to Search.
(Back in 2006 when Yahoo was still a major competitor maybe it did drive
meaningful traffic to Search that wouldn't have occurred otherwise, but that's
very hard to argue today.)

[1] [http://fortune.com/2008/07/22/whats-google-news-
worth-100-mi...](http://fortune.com/2008/07/22/whats-google-news-
worth-100-million/)

[2] pg. 23 of [http://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/...](http://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/Google-Benefit-from-News-Content.pdf)

~~~
woodgrainz
Jeff Jarvis: "Utter bullshit. Snippets in search are NOT content. Jeesh. They
are links TO the publishers. Google does not monetize Google News. When it
makes money on news it's by serving ads ON publishers' sites."

[https://twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/1137980486062678017](https://twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/1137980486062678017)

~~~
fjsolwmv
Why did you post a fake news article an then also post the debunk?

~~~
woodgrainz
It's not a "fake news article." It's a real article in a major publication
that is worthy of discussion.

------
GregorLeban
The article doesn't seems to be worth to be published in NY Times. The $4.7B
was computed based on how much the Google's revenues increased since 2008 when
Google News was bringing in $100M per year. Oh, how accurate this study must
be....

~~~
testplzignore
I'm confused on what the definition of "Google News" is. Is it
[https://news.google.com/](https://news.google.com/) plus the Google News app,
or does it also include the news links shown in Google Search results? I
imagine it's the latter, given that is probably how most people use Google.

I also don't understand where Google is supposedly making huge revenue on
news. Is it solely ads in Google Search? Anecdotally, I just queried for a few
different subjects that are in the news today, and there were zero ads in the
results.

~~~
mpeg
It would be difficult to find a single news publisher that doesn't use DFP
(Doubleclick For Publishers) to serve ads, and presumably lots of them are
also using GDN (Google Display Network) at least to fill up unsold inventory

Not to mention how much they push AMP and they whitelist which ad networks are
allowed to serve ads on AMP [0]

It's very naive to think Google doesn't profit from the News industry.

[0]: [https://amp.dev/it/documentation/components/amp-
ad?format=we...](https://amp.dev/it/documentation/components/amp-
ad?format=websites#supported-ad-networks)

~~~
stvswn
The industry group that represents the publishers here is not talking about
the sell-side ad tech, they're perfectly happy showing ads to their users.
They have lots of choices for sell-side platforms anyway, it's a very robust
and competitive market. They're talking about search results and Google News,
their belief being that Google should share search advertising revenue with
them because their content contributes to the value of search results.

~~~
mpeg
I think it's all related to the sell-side of adtech, publisher revenues have
been going down for years while Google keeps on growing, with AMP and Google
News as weapons to keep revenue hostage from publishers.

Added to that the permanent threat of SEO de-ranking (as the Daily Mail
complained about recently), the relationship between publishers and Google is
fragile.

------
morley

      according to a study to be released on Monday by the News 
      Media Alliance.
    
      ...which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the
      country, including The New York Times.
    

Clearly tech companies have won in the past couple decades where content
producers have lost, but the claims levied article are disingenuous to the
point that this should really be in the Op-Ed section.

------
DanSmooth
Details and study as PDF (27 pages) has been released today:
[https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/release-new-study-
google-r...](https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/release-new-study-google-
revenue-from-news-publishers-content/)

They also provide a pre-written Op-Ed, which differs from the NYT version:
[https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/google-study-
oped/](https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/google-study-oped/)

------
writepub
NYT from 10 years ago would not have published this unsubstantiated propaganda
piece.

Facts are commodity in the age of search engines, and the only "value add"
journalism brings to the table is "opinions". Even the once infallible NYT
apparently cannot resist this fundamental change, and this article is one
grain of sand in a barren desert of listless opining masquerading as news.

~~~
marstall
journalists actually find + report facts, and check them. Without journalists,
there would be far fewer facts! Pick up any newspaper - in every article, in
every paragraph, you will most likely find a newly minted fact produced and
edited by a knowledgeable professional.

~~~
tracker1
Except the "advocate journalist" is more about setting a narrative and using
deception as necessary than getting facts straight.

------
abhv
* Can someone explain how Google makes money from sending clicks to NYT ?

news.google.com doesn't seem to show ads.

* If it is "user search on foo" \--show ads on results page-> "user clicks on ad and also goes to nyt article on foo"

that seems fair.

~~~
_throwawayyyyy1
one way i think about it ... imagine if google, facebook & twitter could
somehow physically no longer link to news stories on any of their properties
... like if there was some magical switch that was thrown ... how much would
their traffic fall, and how much would their revenue fall? I could easily see
that being in the multi billions industry wide. so in that sense they are
making money from news content.

~~~
marstall
it's like a pyramid scheme - web firms stripping value from news companies
until there is none left - and then what? Most of the interesting content on
the internet is, in fact, generated by professional newsgatherers. Take that
away and the web itself loses enormous, enormous value.

------
JimWestergren
Here is the actual study [pdf] [http://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/...](http://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/06/Google-Benefit-from-News-Content.pdf)

------
jayess
No link to the "study" itself so we can review its methodology. No critical
inquiry at all from the NYT. It's treated as truth immediately despite the
absurdity on its face.

------
tracker1
And how much did the news industry make from Google?

------
robbie65
Well that explains why the youtube trending feed is favored to traditional
news media and tv-shows, instead of independent creators.

~~~
luckylion
I believe that's because traditional news media and tv-shows get auto-approved
for trending (it's really not trending, it's "recommended"), while everything
else (save their top nonsense vloggers, I suppose) has to be manually approved
to be allowed to "trend".

They said as much when the "David Hogg Crisis Actor" video was trending. They
didn't catch it because the actual video was unaltered content from a major
news outlet, so it got automatically approved.

