Sydney Morning Herald: ABC terminates New Daily contract, focuses on Google and Facebook. “The [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] will terminate its commercial agreements with several news websites, including industry superannuation fund-backed website, The New Daily, in a strategic shift that will focus on agreements with aggregation platforms like Facebook and Google.”
Reuters: Google signs deals with Italian publishers for content on News Showcase. “Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Wednesday it had sealed agreements with various Italian publishers to offer access to some of their content on the U.S. tech giant’s Showcase news platform. Google News Showcase is a global vehicle to pay news publishers for their content online and a new service that would allow partnering publishers to curate content and provide limited access to paywalled stories for users.”
Livemint: News channels body asks Google to compensate for content. “After the Indian Newspaper Society, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) has written to Internet giant Google on revenue sharing with intermediary technology platforms while seeking a meeting to discuss the ‘urgent need to create an equitable relationship and level the playing field between global tech monopolies and traditional media/news organisations.’”
Google Blog: Get the full news story with Full Coverage in Search. “In 2018, we first introduced the Full Coverage feature as part of Google News. With just a tap, people can see top news, local headlines, in-depth pieces, explainers, interviews and more on a developing news story. We’re now bringing Full Coverage to Search, making it easier for more people to explore all aspects of a story from a variety of perspectives.”
Reuters: Alphabet in talks with Spanish publishers to bring Google News back, sources say. “Alphabet’s Google is negotiating individual licensing deals with a divided Spanish news industry that could allow the U.S. tech giant’s news service to resume in the country, three sources close to the matter told Reuters.”
Brisbane Times: Seven West Media inks $30 million-a-year Google deal. “Seven West Media has inked a deal with Google worth more than $30 million a year for its news content, as Federal Parliament prepares to debate laws to make the tech giant and Facebook compensate news publishers.”
Reuters: Google opens paid-for Australia news platform in drive to undercut Canberra’s content payment law. “Tech giant Google on Friday launched a platform in Australia offering news it has paid for, striking its own content deals with publishers in a drive to show legislation proposed by Canberra to enforce payments, a world first, is unnecessary.”
Sydney Morning Herald: Google is acting the bully in fight over new media code. “Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has rightly said that Google did itself a disservice by its threat. Big Tech, for all its wealth, depends on the support of its tens of millions of users. If Google were to leave Australia, it could find Australians happily migrate their online searches to rivals such as Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo. As their power and influence has grown, Google and Facebook find themselves being asked to act with greater care and responsibility towards the democracies that have allowed them to flourish. They should not place themselves above elected governments.”
TechCrunch: Google inks agreement in France on paying publishers for news reuse. “Google has reached an agreement with an association of French publishers over how it will be pay for reuse of snippets of their content. This is a result of application of a ‘neighbouring right’ for news which was transposed into national law following a pan-EU copyright reform agreed back in 2019. The tech giant had sought to evade paying French publishers for reuse of snippets of content in its news aggregation and search products by no longer displaying them in the country.”
The Guardian: Google admits to running ‘experiments’ which remove some media sites from its search results . “Google has been hiding some Australian news sites from search results, in a move media outlets say is a show of ‘extraordinary power’ as the tech company bargains with the Australian government over financial payment for content.”
Washington Post: How Google is hurting local news. “As an example, we examined the proportion of local and national search results for ‘early voting’ that Google News returned Oct. 26, before the 2020 election. Certainly at least some people searching for that term hoped to get information about local or state early voting information. However, only 20 percent of the top 10 returned searches were from local outlets. If readers kept scrolling past the 20th result, they would eventually find local outlets. But national outlets were the most common sources returned in the top results — and therefore more likely to be clicked. In the top two results, national outlets’ stories appeared 56 percent of the time. Google News’s top pick was a national outlet almost 74 percent of the time.”
NHK World-Japan: Google discusses partnerships with Japanese media. “Google has started negotiating with Japanese media companies to sign them up as partners in its new program called Google News Showcase. The recently launched project involves Google paying news publishers to deliver their stories.”
Reuters: Google signs copyright agreements with six French newspapers. “Alphabet’s Google has signed copyright agreements with six French newspapers and magazines, including national dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro, the U.S. tech company said in a post on its blog on Thursday. The announcement follows months of bargaining between Google, French publishers and news agencies over how to apply revamped EU copyright rules, which allow publishers to demand a fee from online platforms showing extracts of their news.”
University of Pennsylvania: Google News Prioritizes National Media over Local. “A new study from the Annenberg School found that Google News prioritizes national media outlets over local media outlets in search results, even when users are searching for local topics. This means that you’re less likely to see local news results in your search, and the local news results you do receive will be lower on the list, appearing after national news results.”
Global News: Canadian publishers call for collective bargaining with Google, Facebook. “News Media Canada — which represents newspaper publishers including the Globe and Mail, National Post publisher Postmedia, Toronto Star publisher Torstar, La Presse and Quebecor — says the two web giants have established an effective duopoly in the digital ads market that’s starving Canada’s media industry of revenue.”
