Google has reported the results of an experiment it ran which removed news from search results for 1% of users for 2.5 months in eight* markets in Europe — claiming the results show that news is essentially worthless to Google’s ad business.
The search giant conducted the test because European copyright law requires it to pay news publishers for reusing snippets of their content. But how much is displaying news worth? Google argues that publishers “vastly overestimate” the value of their journalism to its business; per its report of the tests, the actual value “could not be statistically distinguished from zero, either overall or by country.”
Google will be hoping to use this outcome as leverage in payment negotiations with European publishers. But the tech giant is walking a tricky line, as it has already faced major antitrust fines in France in recent years in relation to news content. In particular, it was fined more than half a billion dollars over its approach to copyright negotiations with publishers, specifically.
Germany’s competition authority has dialled up scrutiny of elements of Google’s behavior around news — and forced the company to make changes. So any moves by Google to try to undercut the effect of the EU copyright law by claiming news is worthless could land it in more regulatory hot water.
Indeed, the company had initially included users in France in the news ablation tests but abandoned this portion of the experiment after a French court warned it would be fined for breaking a prior agreement with the antitrust authority. Notably, Google also did not run the test in Germany.
* Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain
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