As a Google user, I value it because it finds things. Some of those things cost me money. To make this visceral: what differentiates Google finding me an expensive camera that I can buy from B&H that matches my search criteria and helps me get my work done of Google finding me an expensive article from the Wall Street Journal that matches my search criteria and helps me get my work done? If Google wants to optimize for "lowest price" then it should make that a non-default criterion as otherwise they are just helping me find cheap, low quality crap: if that is providing you value you probably have a broken definition of "value" :/.

> To make this visceral: what differentiates Google finding me an expensive camera that I can buy from B&H that matches my search criteria and helps me get my work done of Google finding me an expensive article from the Wall Street Journal that matches my search criteria and helps me get my work done?

Likely, what percentage of users come back to search and keep trying other results. From a simplistic point of view, the value proposition to users can be derived what what percentage had their query answered by that source. If WSJ is taking some number of visitors from Google that used to get a page that caused them to stop searching and now providing a page that does not cause them to stop searching, they are providing a less useful resource overall for Google users.

WSJ is providing objectively worse results on average for Google users than they were previously. It makes sense that would cause their ranking to drop.

You nailed it. It's in Google's interest to provide the best user experience and a large part of that is optimizing for the "best" result. Whether or not a user returns to search results, or executes a subsequent search are some of the many signals used to determine this.

It's a great metric for a lot of things, but definitively not to determine the value of a piece of journalistic writing. Here we're saying that the article SHOULD be free in order to gain value. So basically we're saying: it's ok to attribute no value to it if Google thinks so. I'm not a fan of hard paywalls, but this is definitively a fallacy in the definition of value, and Google shouldn't have it so easy.

Google isn't determining the value of paywalled articles, the general population is. Google is just facilitating the desires of users. The obstructive thing for Google to do would be to put WSJ near the top because Google thinks it's valuable, even though the users find it useless.

The problem with your assumption there is that both of those things cost money. The benefit ratio for a cheap, but crappy camera to an expensive one might be $250 to $1000, about a 4x ratio, that's a fairly low, finite and often measurable improvement on that camera. That ratio might be acceptable for someone who wants a high quality camera.

With news content it's free vs a few hundred dollars a year, more if you want multiple paid sources, unless you find that all of those free sources including BBC, AP, etc are so bad that they provide negative value and just waste your time then it's in your best interest (infinite ratio) to try to get by with those free sources, ultimately the information from most news articles is by and large equivalent. If Google is able to raise those higher quality free sources to the top of results, that provides much better value to users than suggesting paid sources - most users on finding a paid source will just click the back button and pick another source, the paid source having just wasted their time completely.

> unless you find that all of those free sources including BBC, AP, etc are so bad that they provide negative value and just waste your time then it's in your best interest (infinite ratio) to try to get by with those free sources

So, like the GP said, that's "a broken definition of 'value'" on the face!

Wouldn't you at least concede that if some sources do in fact provide negative value, it might be preferred to connect those sources that do consistently provide value, directly with even some small reward (like a subscription, maybe a per-article cost) in exchange for consistently providing positive value?

How do content creators make a return on their investments, is it meant to be indirectly, through advertising, or is it some other way I haven't thought of that will recoup their costs)

This is all nonsense anyway and I don't believe any of it. Information has to be free, and it's either all free or none of it is. The paywall is wrong, if it seeks to prevent us from sharing information then it will fail, and Google, a part of the system of freedom, is properly set up to route around the damage of censorship inflicted by asserters of copyrights. The paywalls that don't provide free information, moved down or were delisted in the rankings like I think should happen.

If growth in your business model depends on broadening the subscriber-ship and thus reach of your own information, but also on limiting the proliferation of your own information, then it is wrong too. I don't know what this means for news media companies that have to turn a profit for their shareholders; I guess I can safely say their concerns are not my concerns.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch another episode of Black Mirror.

People are downvoting but I don't know if you disagree with the first half of what I said, or the second half. It would be helpful if you responded!

I think people might be downvoting because you're sort of all over the place and expressing 2 different opinions which seem contradictory.

I think that content creators should get paid, but I don't want them to try to put DRM chips in our brains to make sure we're all paying for whatever information we consume.

I don't think it's right that they carve out this valley between their legally afforded copyright protections and my fair-use rights meant to assure I can never use my fair-use rights even after their copyrights are long expired (as if it was even possible for a copyright to expire anymore.)

Yes, I am a little off-topic from WSJ Paywall, but it's all one discussion. How do content creators get paid in my ideal version of reality? At the pleasure of content consumers. What can content creators do when that's demonstrated not to be working? IDK not restrictive digital rights management schemes, tho.

There are no easy answers that would satisfy me as either a content consumer or creator.

Comparing the economics of a pure bit-based product (media) with a pure atom-based product (camera) is not the most convincing way to make an argument in my opinion.

You can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free. You'll probably say that's not true because the value you get from WSJ is not news but their commentary, but even in this case that particular "value" is very subjective and for most people it's not valuable enough.

I for one don't care about whatever elite content they write. And I definitely don't care for a mere website wasting my time by making me click through just to find out I can't read it, over and over again.

That's probably the biggest concern for the WSJ and other news sources that might follow their lead. Most news coverage--excluding content like features, initial exclusives, and commentary--can be considered a substitute good. You'll find it on other sites. Unless you've built a sort of loyalty or trust with a reader, they'll just go elsewhere.

But to build that loyalty, you need to get readers to come to your site in the first place. Policies that harm your performance in search results would seem to be contraindicated.

So you believe that there is such thing as a news report without commentary?

No

So, because your product is easy to copy, that makes it not valuable. A rejection of the concept of IP with different words.

I don't know if you have heard of "strawman fallacy" but you and the other guy below saying "So you believe that there is such thing as a news report without commentary?" have fallen into that trap.

It's not even funny how you go from my argument to "This makes it not valuable" to "A rejection of the concept of IP with different words".

Here, let me spell it out for you by copy and pasting the same comment:

> You can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free. You'll probably say that's not true because the value you get from WSJ is not news but their commentary, but even in this case that particular "value" is very subjective and for most people it's not valuable enough.

- It is fact that you can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free.

- And I said the "value" is very subjective. and it's not "valuable enough" for most people. Yet you go on and say I said "it's not valuable". Then somehow go from that to accusing me of rejecting the concept of IP. I don't even know where to start.

The strawman fallacy is when you misattribute a position to someone.

"Strawman" not a catchall for "I don't see all the steps in your argument for how my position X implied Y." I'd be glad to spell those out more explicitly.

>...It is fact that you can get most of what WSJ writes somewhere else for free.

It is a fact because people copy it. Therefore, you're saying it's not valuable because people can get it elsewhere because it was copied. So, the copy-ability made it valueless, exactly as I inferred from your argument (rather than misattributing it).

(late edit: Also, the fact that you insist on "atom-based" and "bit-based" being incomparable doesn't help your case that you're not rejecting IP: "Comparing the economics of a pure bit-based product (media) with a pure atom-based product (camera)".)

Okay, perhaps that is not what you meant and therefore it was a strawman -- but that's the only self-consistent, plausible reading I saw.

The only other meaning is that,

"You can get all the interesting facts contained in this story from different sources, without just copy-pasting."

Is that what you meant? If so, it's implausible on its face: why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"?

>And I said the "value" is very subjective. and it's not "valuable enough" for most people. Yet you go on and say I said "it's not valuable". Then somehow go from that to accusing me of rejecting the concept of IP. I don't even know where to start.

I said that because you dismissed the value on the grounds of it being "subjective", which was close enough in this context to saying "oh, I can't quite put a hard value on it, so I don't have to care about this journalism going away". As above, why don't people just find another non-copied source? Because they non-subjectively do want to look at this specific source.

With that said, I do agree that it may not be obvious how your position is tantamount to rejecting IP. But I was deriving that as an implication, not misattributing anything to you. Whether or not you recognize this position as implicitly rejecting of all IP, there is certainly a clear logical chain for how it has such an implication.

Edit: I know we're not supposed to talk about downvotes, could they at least wait the 60 seconds necessary to read this?

> why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"?

Because people come to HN, click on a link, see it's paywalled and leave a comment complaining about it, then move on to a different post. Most people who complain about the paywall likely aren't invested enough in the headline to find another source for the same information.

Personally I mostly skim HN for news. If an article is paywalled and isn't profoundly interesting to me, I can spend the time it would cost me to look up alternate sources for the same story just reading something else instead. I don't read WSJ articles because they're better, I read them because they're there. In fact, I actually prefer other news outlets.

You're misattributing motives to what boils down to mere laziness. And even in doing that you don't actually have a case because many news stories have alternative sources in the HN comments, especially when they're paywalled or too superficial.

So, yes, you're misattributing motives, which is literally how you just defined strawmen.

> If so, it's implausible on its face: why are people trying to circumvent the paywall if they didn't want the WSJ's article specifically? Why can't they just go somewhere else? Why do they load HN discussion with complaints about a paywall rather than "here's the free, independent version that's just as good"?

Social objects. The actual value of a particular article isn't the article itself, but the fact that you and other people in the tread have read the same article. In HN discussions, people will go around paywalls not because they can't find another source, but because they want to read the same source as everyone else.

It's not just that the product itself is easy to copy, it's that the facts themselves are not copywritable, only the writing is. Meaning a source without that restriction provides the value without the cost.

With the exception of more creative editorial pieces, most news falls into this bucket.

You're still saying that the work involved in collecting those facts -- journalism -- is without value, and if no one bothers to do this professionally because their work will just be instacopied, so be it.

You can be the person who just complains about how people don't appreciate journalism, or you can acknowledge the reality and think in more productive ways. The ones who make a difference are generally the ones who think more productively instead of just blaming the people who "don't get it".

If traditional media journalism was truly appreciated, then they wouldn't even have this problem. And honestly they have lost a lot of respect from people in the recent years because they have been doing a lot of things to undermine their own journalistic principles in order to make more money.

The fact that someone prefers to cheap out and read the copy-pasted version doesn't mean they don't appreciate the paywalled version; it just means they want it for free. For all we know, it was high-quality journalism.

See also the sibling reply.

It would be very interesting if Search could differentiate between the three users:

- WSJ subscriber, where WSJ results should be present and maybe even get a ranking boost.

- User happy with paywall results, these results could be surfaced, with UI treatment indicating paywall.

- User uninterested in paywall results, where these results would be essentially removed.

The ranking between the latter 2 of these users could be a bit of a sliding scale too, rather than two distinct groups.

Why is it Google's responsibility to administer all this? They have a published algorithm that is intended to maximize fair play on the web. If you don't like that algorithm find a way to buy off the other search engines for paid placement.

>> Why is it Google's responsibility to administer all this?

Setting "don't be evil" aside, Google's only responsibility is to Google.

But here's the rub. Google's product is its users' attention. If they bias their search results enough, (maybe) they lose product inventory.

How much is "enough"? Probably much more than filtering WSJ.

But IMO bias in a search engine – a presumed oracle of truth – is evil. So there's that.

If you think that bias is a bad idea than Googles current approach seems okay. They don't bias against WSJ, but they don't bias for WSJ either - The Google bot has less material to work with, so their is less content compared to other sources, so it has a worse ranking. No bias.

There are no more unique WSJ results if they're all a paywall.

They could apply a subtle background (like they do for sponsored results) to results that are behind a paywall, behind a registration-wall, or otherwise inaccessible.

Or they could just demote them, since inaccessible by any of those means less likely to be useful to a searcher.

Alternatively, wsj could sponsor those results, and jump to the top with their paywalled content.

I assume the rule that a site must show searchers what they show google bots derives from that contract with searchers is a key component of the search user experience. I think google have become enough of a monopoly that much of their behavior is negative for users as a whole, but not this. Imagine a search engine where cloaking is allowed...

You hit upon the main difference between the digital economy and the real world economy. People keep trying to equate the two.

Google itself is fueled by online ad revenue. Facebook has ads too, and it's trying to explore every angle (video, etc.) to get people to click.

Both companies know about your likes and interests when you are logged in (Facebook because you declared them, Google because of your past searches) and those of your friends (GMail contacts and GPlus / Hangouts connections in Google's case).

Facebook is more blatant about trying to monetize the ads and still do worse, because people use Google for search, and that's when their intent lines up with actually buying.

Thing is, ads are a commodity in a race to the bottom. You can see every company struggling with this, not just Wall Street Journal but Google. They keep going down. They try new things. Then the ad revenues drop again.

In the real world, you buy a product or a service and you pay for it. This doesn't go down nearly as much in price (although automation and outsourcing may make some impact on wages to locals). If you get paid a commission PER SALE, you've got a sustainable business.

David Heinemeier Hansson constantly talks for years about how you should be building $AAS and charging for it, instead of making everything free and slapping ads on it.

Another acquaintance of mine, Albert Wenger from USV has a whole book about how digital goods are essentially free to perfectly copy, leading to a post-scarcity world in digital goods, with only artificial constraints such as copyright enforcement propping up their price. He has a book out called worldaftercapital.com where he describes humanity's progression from the hunter gatherer societies through today, and explores what the economy will look like later.

So, if you're in the business of creating content, you're now competing in a GLOBAL market. WSJ and other publishers got to enjoy the distribution of their newspapers for decades with copyright protections, as did the music industry. But at the end of the day, when the means of copying information make it cheap to free, you've got to figure out other business models. The freemium one is a good trade-off. But really, why would I pay for WSJ after my free 3 articles a month are up? When there are so many other outlets reporting the same things? Because I like or want to support the WSJ specifically. Their brand. I did pay for a NYT subscription after all.

You know what I really value far more than WSJ and NYT? Wikipedia.

And how much does it cost to run it? Not much (aside from hosting) because people collectively build on each other's work and editors check new contributions to achieve a result that is quite good. People cooperate more than they compete, because the rules of the game are such.

I see such things as being superior to capitalist competition. Look at open source (Linux, Firefox) vs closed source (Windows, IE). The former runs on toasters, the latter doesn't and still over time is less stable. The former overtakes it in quality.

Why not as a society embrace WikiNews and other such sites? Why do we even need the old model of journalism? Because it will appeal to certain niches, just like newspapers used to circulate to small communities and not sold all over the world the next day. Now they'll be sold all over the world but their readership will shrink.

The information economy is and has always been. different. Digital ads for digital websites are far different than commission sales of real world items. 3D printing may one day bring the two worlds closer in some areas, but we are still all a long way away from that.

well put

Because information wants to be free and you can't copy a camera? Surely most people would not just buy an expensive camera from the place it costs most, even though the service might be better? You would probably compare prices and unless you have a strong alternative argument (moral?), you'd go for one of the cheaper places.

I'm not sure we should put the morality in Google's hands. If you want top journalism, you ought to pay for it, but it makes sense search engines provide the quickest path to information, and that's usually not a paywall.

The difference is that Google makes money if the WSJ were to be using their ad network to monetise, or not using if its paywalled content.

Very well said. I have this image of an alternate universe where people are whining that when they google for that camera, it should give them the name a fence (as in, seller of stolen goods) that offers home delivery.

Provides Google value

Not necessarily mutually exclusive

The whole point of a search engine is to make O(1) queries that iterate through O(n) sources; if I have to individually query all O(n) sources, that defeats the purpose.

> provides Google users value

Google shareholders value