Making Google pay publishers

France has fined Google €500m for not negotiating ‘in good faith’ to pay newspapers whenever a link to their sites appears in search. Of course, if the French were in good faith then the newspapers would be paying, so what next?

The underlying reasoning is very simple and make perfect sense, if you’ve never used the internet or thought much about how it works: “Newspapers have to be on Google and FB, but G&FB need them as well for completeless, and G&FB’s market power means the newspapers can’t demand payment for this. So, this is a competition problem”. Sure, except that 1: no-one else pays to make a link either (I don’t, and I have no market power) and 2: why should it only be newspapers that get paid, and not the other 99% of links that show up in search results?

The financial viability of news is indeed an important social and political question, but that doesn’t mean it’s a competition question. If you think there should be a subsidy, and a tax, you should be honest and do that, not fabricate imaginary economic arguments. The trouble is, taxes and subsidies would break all sorts of trade agreements, but if you pretend it’s a competition issue you can try to avoid the rules.

from Ben Evans excellent newsletter

Couldn’t agree more