I think HN just has a large pro-google crowd. I remember it used to be everyone loved google. So it shouldn't be a surprise that one of the remaining bastions of google public support would be a silicon valley startup community.
I suspect a lot of people outside Australia are unaware of how respected an institution the ACCC is. Maybe that is why they are so quick to discount their response here.
Maybe we’ve been living in different Australias, but over the last decade the ACCC (like virtually every other public institution) has become yet another mouthpiece for the government.
From their attacks on solar, their constant support of “traditional media” (Murdoch), and their utter ineptitude to actually protect individual consumers, any respect left is there through inertia alone.
Then ACCC is far from in the right here; this seems to be being driven by political motivations, not some motivation to do the best for Australia / Australians.
The ACCC has plenty of opportunity to explain why it’s better this way, and don’t seem to have clearly articulated it.
“Better for democracy” or “better for newscorp”? You tell me; why the ABC and SBS are excluded from this?
...because that’s what the government wants. The ACCC Looks increasingly like it’s just a mouthpiece.
I don't like the newscorp news actually. But it is revealing that you would think this. One might suspect we just have different views on who should be controlling things in this case. I am not as confident as I suspect you might be about who should be controlling media access. But I think google is being very disingenious in their letter, and the ACCC seems far less so.
Either techies suddenly think that the EU was right, their opinion of Google massively cratered in a year and a half's time, or they have an unreasonable love affair with Australian news companies.
Really? Google seems to get torn to shreds here quite regularly.
They are not scraping them from websites who as always are completely free to exempt themselves from searches via the sitemap.xml file.
The success of Walmart created an environment where only good business decisions in a short term destroyed of the brand and profits in the long term.
(1) If supplier did not deal trough Walmart, their market gradually declined because Big-Box Retailers squeezed out alternative channels.
(2) Eventually supplier made deal with Walmart to stop decline in the market share. First years saw profits increase and huge increase in sales. But Walmart buyers come in regularly every year and demand smaller price. And they don't take no as an answer. They are ruthless negotiators and religious about cutting prices. First supplier profit margins drop, then absolute profits, then they must cut the quality of the product. Eventually they have destroyed their brand and the product.
There are hundreds of suppliers who suffered this fate. Destruction of Levi Strauss brand and quality is classic business case.
Music lyrics sites just seem like an unviable business. They license low-value data from the owner, surround it with a crapton of ads, then serve that up to users. They have very little stickiness and one is about as good as another. From a user perspective, having those results directly on Google is better about 90% of the time. There are only two lyrics sites I'm aware of that offer any value above Google's version: songmeanings.net and genius.com, and the little value they provide comes from the hosting of user comments.
Lyrics sites come up a lot on here, but I do not really understand why. Consumers do not get much benefit from their continued existence. The only people who benefit are the site owners themselves.
Internet content making is someone anyone can do. It's hard to make it profitable.
Is this really the fault of big tech?
Yes. And if lower prices are the only reason for antitrust everything is fine.
In the US at the beginning of the 80s Robert Bork broke from the traditional antitrust thinking and started a tradition where only "consumer welfare" (lower prices) are meaningful reason for antitrust policies.
Rest of the world never bought that and now thinking even in the US is starting to change. Free markets are not just about low prices. Restoring traditional antitrust and competition policy principles are coming back. Such as applying common carrier obligations and duties to platform economics.
>Is this really the fault of big tech?
I didn't make any normative statements.
Nitpick: you mean meta noindex and/or robots.txt
Google can probably do voice recognition now on songs and get the lyrics without outside parties (see youtube cc which is pretty good).
Or they can strike a deal with music companies to get lyrics when they get the songs...
Lyrics are copyrighted. Google is the serf here, renting lyrics from musixmatch.
What do you mean? It's a ridiculous, arbitrary money grab used to fund old the old media mates of politicians.
See Mike Cannon Brooke's (as someone who most definitely isn't getting paid by Google) thread to see how insane the rules are:
https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/status/128913303821591347...
https://twitter.com/mcannonbrookes/status/128914438106094387...
70% of the commercial media here is controlled by one American company, and perhaps not coincidentally they have a very close relationship with the Government. The Government has literally just given their cable network $40 million dollars over the last few budgets, completely un-tendered and without any reporting requirements or anything, to "help advance women's sport" - even though 75% of Australians aren't subscribers and SBS would be a better venue for such content...
So your solution is to make them even worse by letting Google bleed them dry?
What percentage of Australian's news reading goes through Google? What percentage of Australia's advertising spend does Google command?
I don't have all the answers, but the best way I think I can support quality journalism is to subscribe to some independent news sites now (Michael West, MacroBusiness, Anthony Klan's new site The Klaxon. Might think about Crikey too because it seems pretty good).
Seems like News Corp helped them both get started. Why shouldn't News Corp continue to fund others as well?
It's a blatant moneygrab for fossils from a government they have by the balls.
The classified ads have dried up and they're out of ideas.
As for news discovered by regular search, I think that is different because the user has to input specific search keywords and restrict to recent results. The difference is about intention and recurring visits.
The situation seems similar to the Google Books fiasco, where we didn't end up with a searchable online library of out of print books. Lots of arguments were raised back then as now, but the bottom line was that everyone tried to do good for himself and we all got less - the prisoner's dilemma in action.
If it didn't make business sense then Google wouldn't be showing them in the first place. It plainly does make business sense. Google shouldn't be afraid to pay for what it uses.
The want to have their cake and eat it too, plus get paid for the privilege.
Having said this, I have no sympathy for Google either.
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...
Well, nothing except for the fact that their own sites are not compelling enough for customers in order to be profitable, so they don't want to do it.
What do you think this is all about? The ACCC is acting to address the practical realities of the situation. That's what the ACCC is there for.
Just the fact that the ABC and SBS are excluded says it all really. This is clearly not about journalism.
You really are failing to understand this. You must try harder.
I understand and it's ridiculous. Just because your business is not profitable shouldn't mean another business should be forced to subsidise it. Unless you have mates that can make laws, that is.
Lots of interesting things on Robots meta tag:
https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_t...
This money would go to an organisation which largely peddles outrage and division.
Frankly that's Google, Facebook, and Twitter. They are aimed at maximising engagement and outrage does that for them. They keep feeding people what they think they want to see and the further down the rabbit hole they go the weirder and more extreme it gets.
Please, do a google image search for "daily telegraph cover", and then give me your description of the Murdoch news media.
The only way they'd survive is by producing fawning, uncritical reports, like almost every interview done with movie stars.
And SBS is partially government funded: https://www.sbs.com.au
But it's not enough to have just two news organisations.
To see the truth of my claim, consider what's going to happen if Google declines to "use" the Australian news media after this law is passed. I doubt any serious person believes this will be helpful to the news media's bottom line. So you'll have an even more serious problem for news media revenue, and also the search engine most people use will be doing a worse job of helping people get the information they're looking for. All because the government chose a complex policy solution to a simple policy problem. (At least, the problem as stated is simple. I suspect the actual problem the government is trying to solve is a little different than what is publicly claimed.)
Why do you believe that everyone else must pay Google's costs? Why do you think Google shouldn't pay its own way? It's a bizarre position to take.
It's disappointing that you've failed to understand the issues. Read more:
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...
There's not much I can do for you anymore. It's up to you now.
Which is not the same as "Google is profitable."
Good grief. This is about making sure journalism survives. Google bleeding it dry doesn't help it survive.
What do you think?
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...
They've tried to scare people into compliance since the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van
There's nothing in the terms that means the money goes to hiring journalists at all.
If you shouldn’t, why should google pay to link to news? Google news is not a profit center for google. They make money from ads.
The whole “pay us for sending us traffic” argument has the economics of the web completely backwards. Organizations try to get links, as it sends them traffic.
Should hacker news pay money to the sites it links to? Or do they benefit from being here?
Lyrics
Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin' that's the way you do it
Money for nothin' and chicks for free… More
Source: https://www.musixmatch.com
© Straitjacket Songs Ltd., Gm SumnerClicking “Full Lyrics” also just leads you to another google page. With another link to Musixmatch’s index page at the bottom, not the actual lyrics page.
Reading the defenses here in HN, I have become personally partial to conspiracy theories that too many paid commenters are among the crowd here.
Plus i don't get what the fuss is about google news. I don't think it's used much outside the US, and even these websites aren't just going to lose all their traffic, because people are addicted to news. They 'll be partly visiting local websites more often, and this shift may actualy be enough to revive the income-starved journalism profession.