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0 pointssimias7y ago0 comments

I agree that this is probably going to backfire spectacularly but if we give the proponents the benefit of the doubt it could be argued that while the big G might not care about Google News, users may. If these news aggregator shutdown they will look for alternatives which might create an opportunity for people to develop news aggregator that share the revenue more fairly with the newspapers. I doubt this is going to happen but I suppose it might sound right for people who are not deeply familiar with the way the internet works.

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AnthonyMouse7y ago

> If these news aggregator shutdown they will look for alternatives which might create an opportunity for people to develop news aggregator that share the revenue more fairly with the newspapers.

The problem is, what revenue? News aggregation is not a huge profit center to begin with. Then you take that already-small amount of money and split it between thousands of independent news organizations, each of which requires its own transaction costs, and the transaction costs sink the whole enterprise.

Dylan168077y ago

And it's not like my news app can't make 50 http requests to do good-enough aggregation itself, for free.

ivanhoe7y ago

Well, radio stations don't earn a lot either, but still have to pay licence fees for the music they play. Perhaps some sort of flat fee paid based on some statistics how much content has been shared from which source would make sense. It will not be a huge money, but it's still better than no money at all. Aggregators/ search engines need the content produced at the volume, otherwise they'll be out of business too at some point, so it can be mutually benefitial.

nostrademons7y ago

80% of radio stations in the U.S. are owned by one company (iHeartMedia, formerly ClearChannel), and despite this monopoly negotiating power, the company is still operating out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a $20B debt load.

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cortesoft7y ago

Radio stations make the little that money they do because they are using a limited resource- spectrum. That is not the case on the Internet.

Eridrus7y ago

Has this happened in Spain? They've already done this experiment on a smaller scale.

sputr7y ago

Google simply shutdown it's operation there.

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