Part of Google’s business model involves monetizing clicks. Each time a user clicks on a link that they have searched for in Google search, a certain amount of money is paid to Google with the help of its advertising program. About forty percent of all searches have something or the other to do with current affairs, news and other kind of journalism, and the fact of the matter is that Google is earning a ton of money from this arrangement. The conservative estimate for last year comes up to around $4.7 billion, according to a study by NewsMediaAllianc. It’s important to note that Google probably earned a lot more than this from news publishers because of the fact that it mines user data and monetizes that as well, but the $4.7 billion figure is more important because some journalists are claiming that they are owed royalties from this figure.
Google would not be able to earn this much money were it not for the content provided by journalists, which definitely means that they are owed some money in exchange for providing this service. Since Google earns even more from data mining and the like, it becomes even clearer that the tech giant should ideally be giving out royalties to journalists whose articles they are linking to.
An argument against this would state that Google is bringing traffic to these sites and the publishers can earn money through this traffic, but first and foremost Google is profiting off of this arrangement because of the content that is provided by these sites so the traffic they are sending there is more or less irrelevant at this point in time. Only time will tell if Google manages to get through this scandal in one piece.
Photo: Reuters / Thomas Peter
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Every penny of that is the result of the labor of low-paid journalists, hanging on by their fingernails. What happens to Google’s profits when all that free high-quality content just goes away? https://t.co/r4hCUVaYKo— DaveLaFontaine (@DaveLaFontaine) June 9, 2019
Well you see...— James Purser (@purserj) June 10, 2019
Media orgs ignored Google and facebook right up until Google and Facebook ate their lunch (ad revenue).
Oh, and because of the internet itself, your local paper is competing with news media around the world directly. https://t.co/lJbTbIqSGQ
Google would not be able to earn this much money were it not for the content provided by journalists, which definitely means that they are owed some money in exchange for providing this service. Since Google earns even more from data mining and the like, it becomes even clearer that the tech giant should ideally be giving out royalties to journalists whose articles they are linking to.
An argument against this would state that Google is bringing traffic to these sites and the publishers can earn money through this traffic, but first and foremost Google is profiting off of this arrangement because of the content that is provided by these sites so the traffic they are sending there is more or less irrelevant at this point in time. Only time will tell if Google manages to get through this scandal in one piece.
Photo: Reuters / Thomas Peter
Read next: I'm not a Robot - Social Media Users Speak up Against the Inconveniences caused by Google reCaptcha!
