Recently, Google revealed the findings of an unusual experiment: for two and a half months, they removed news results from searches for a small percentage (1%) of users across eight European countries. The company claims this experiment proves that news content contributes practically nothing to their advertising revenue.
This test was conducted in response to European copyright laws that mandate Google pay news publishers for using snippets of their content. The core question is, of course, how much is news worth to Google? The tech giant argues that publishers significantly overestimate the value of their journalism.
According to their own report, the impact of news on their ad business was “statistically indistinguishable from zero,” both overall and in each individual country studied.
Google likely intends to use these findings as leverage in ongoing payment negotiations with European publishers. However, they’re treading a delicate path. They’ve already faced substantial antitrust fines in France for their handling of news content, including a hefty penalty exceeding half a billion dollars for their approach to copyright negotiations.
Furthermore, German regulators have increased their scrutiny of Google’s news-related practices, even forcing the company to make adjustments. Any attempt by Google to diminish the perceived value of news to circumvent EU copyright laws could easily lead to further regulatory challenges.
Interestingly, Google initially included French users in their news removal experiment but abruptly stopped after a French court threatened fines for violating a previous agreement with antitrust authorities. Notably, Germany was entirely excluded from this experiment.”
