If I were a policymaker and I had to choose between saving a free and independent press and saving a big advertising company, I know which side I'd be on.
I really don't understand why Google should pay for what they do.
The point is that their childish fantasy of a policy will only hurt everyone except for those who long for a tightly controlled media oligarchy with moats protecting from competition.
If we can't realign their incentives with revenue sharing with news sites, we need to shut them down, because the way things are going, Google is bleeding out the journalism industry. They were in a symbiotic relationship, but it has transitioned to a parasitic one.
[1] https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1055606344559063040
We've seem some shots fired in this battle already. In the earlier days of google search for something with a clear cut answer, and you'd likely see the answer in the summary. Sites missed out on that traffic so they started moving the answer lower down in the page, with poorly written teaser summaries in the results. Now google is showing a large block at the top of the page with it's guess to the answer at the top.
First: Google doesn't need saving. They're doing just fine.
Second: I fear that every proposal to save a free and independent press is going to destroy freedom in some very concrete ways.
1) Any time somebody suggests taxing, breaking up, or otherwise regulating the tech giants, there's a chorus of voices afraid we'll kill their golden goose. That's why I phrased it as a choice to "save" one or the other. If it ever did come down to a binary choice, I'd sooner our society sacrificed Google to save NYT/BBC/Der Spiegel. Others may disagree, of course.
2) There's a legitimate argument to be made that government intervention to shore up the press will result in unintended consequences and/or make the press beholden to their government benefactors.