Tech giants made to pay for using news publishers' content
Australia's government is to make Google and Facebook pay local media organisations for their content.


In the latest twist in the debate over whether the tech giants are “unfairly benefiting from news articles that they link to”, the Australian government will force Google and Facebook to pay local media organisations for their content, says Mike Cherney in The Wall Street Journal.
While publishers have “long sought” compensation from Google and Facebook, which boost their own traffic by including news links, the tech giants have resisted paying for news content. They insist that publishers benefit by getting large amounts of traffic directed to them. Australia’s treasurer Josh Frydenberg (pictured) said the amount that the tech giants would be told to pay to local media organisations would be in the “millions of dollars”.
No wonder Australia has acted, says Jeffrey Goldfarb, for Breakingviews. After all, Google and Facebook account for “some 71% of spending in the $5.8bn online advertising market”, while the government has promised to help broadcasters and newspapers who are desperate for money. Still, the sums raised “probably won’t be enough” to save many “struggling” media companies.
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And there’s always the possibility that Google and Facebook could simply “pull news content” from their Australian searches if the law required them “to pay for using it”, says Margaret Simons in The Guardian. After all, when Spain made payment compulsory, Google simply ended Google News for that country. However, with regulators across the world starting to work together it is hard to see how the tech giants can avoid agreeing a deal eventually.
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Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.
He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.
Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.
As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.
Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri
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