But given that we are in 2018, not right after 2001-09-11 as when it was created, even if Google News doesn't add anything positive to Google's bottom line or PR (big, BIG "if") there's a huge cost to shutting it down to Google PR, since it's another example of Google shutting a popular product.
If the EU is doing this, it actually gives Google an excuse, in case they wanted to shut it down anyway. And nobody else would make a replacement because it's just not economical.
Yes. I agree that "being logged in while browsing the Internet" has value to Google.
You may disagree on what that value is. I may be way off, but it's a Fermi estimate. I encourage you to plug in the numbers you would estimate, and see what monetary value Google News has to Google, and see if a link tax with amounts that news sites would actually care about makes economic sense.
> That's a bit of mental gymnastics here.
I agree. It's more a counter-point to "obviously Google should pay" than a suggestion for a better model.
> Nobody is giving anybody a freebie here.
On this we agree. Both supply-side parties add value, and all three parties gain value. To say that one of the parties is a "leech" is not accurate.
If the EU forces Google to pay a meaningful fee to news sites, then that may (in my estimate: extremely likely to) completely erase any benefits, and it'd be rational for Google to bug out.
In particular I'm sure Google benefits from news indirectly by giving them valuable info about their users (you can tell a lot about somebody by what news they're interested in) and also by adding one more potentially useful service to the Google "suite", giving one more reason for users to commit to their ecosystems. That being said I'm incapable of judging of the actual monetary value of either of these things.
>People do pay for Google Search ads to drive traffic to their site, and for newspapers that probably gives them ad revenue and signups.
>Newspapers get a similar service from Google News for free.
That's a bit of mental gymnastics here. That's like saying "people pay to have google ads, but you can also get listed in the organic results for free! Thanks Google!". If I go to Google news then I expect to see news, them only displaying newspapers that agree to pay for it would make the service objectively worse. That would be like having Google search only listing ads and no organic results.
As rational actors it's in the newspaper's best interest to create content that interests people and it's in Google's best interest to promote that content to make their service valuable. Nobody is giving anybody a freebie here.