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“The Meta news ban has impacted Canadian news publishers, who have seen a decline in traffic from both Facebook and Instagram … More broadly, it is affecting Canadians at a time when wildfires are raging.
“With publishers blocked from posting, Canadians have now resorted to taking screenshots of stories and are sharing them to keep their friends and neighbours updated on the latest wildfire information.”
News to Google
Earlier this year, a firm called FehrAdvice & Partners, on behalf of a Swiss publishers’ association, put 1573 people to task to estimate the value of news to Google. It split them into two groups, each of whom used a different version of a search engine: one with “journalistic content”, and one without.
They were then asked to search for information.
Seventy per cent of people said they preferred the version with media content. “Overall, the results support the hypothesis that people would migrate from the Google ecosystem if the balance in the information ecosystem is disturbed,” the authors noted.
They used the study to put a price tag on news: Search was a 1.1 billion Swiss franc ($1.94 billion) market in Switzerland in 2021. Google has a 90 per cent share of that market. About 55 per cent of searches are “information searches”, as opposed to “product” or “navigation” searches.
Then they added the 70 per cent of people who said they would consider switching to a competitor if Google didn’t have news content. What’s left was 385 million Swiss francs that was attributable to news content.
Sharing 40 per cent of revenue with the industry would mean 154 million Swiss francs in compensation. In Australia, using the same methodology – for what industry body IAB Australia estimated was a $6.17 billion search advertising market last year – would result in $844 million in payments.
Google declined to comment on the study, but a spokesman noted it had been rebutted by other experts. One European competition group, Project DisCo, criticised its methodology as “absurd”.
A key proponent of the bargaining code, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims, said calculating precise figures was challenging – but it was always clear there was value.
Rod Sims chaired the ACCC when the regulator was pushing for technology companies to share some of their revenues with news publishers. Dominic Lorrimer
“The point is, having news makes your search engine better. Therefore, it gets more people using your search engine, and more people you can show ads to. News media adds to the attractiveness of your content, therefore increases ad revenue,” Mr Sims said.
“It’s the same for Facebook. It wants people on its platform, so it can advertise to them.”
Will Hayward, the chief executive of Crikey publisher Private Media, said Google had acted with integrity during local negotiations.
“At the least they deserve some credit for accepting that despite this, news is central to search, and they have a critical part to play in supporting its production,” he said.
Swinburne University’s Belinda Barnet, who researches platform regulation and digital media, said news had always been more valuable to Google than Facebook.
“What is the price of fact to a search engine? News content is a constant, reliable, fact-checked source of information,” Dr Barnet said.
“I’m not saying all news is true, or fact-checked, but something from The New York Times is more likely to be fact-checked than Jordan Peterson on his blog.”
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