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Comment by jeremyjh | Hacker News Reader

Google makes money by exposing eyeballs to advertisements. They will have less eyeballs in the future, and get fewer revenues as a result.

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Google news doesn't have ads. There's no money to lose.

The whole concept France is pushing has been ludicrous all along. There's no revenue to share or for Google to lose. It's just a free service. Just free. No ads. No money.

The ads are on the search page. Not the news page.

Google doesn't provide services that provide no benefit to Google. If people can't get the news they are used to from Google News, they will get it elsewhere, and that means less engagement with Google.

Google News leads to more news being read online. Google makes money when news is read online because Google has a monopoly on online advertising. Google ONLY makes money from Google News when users click through to read articles.

Having data on online news reading habbits is a nice bonus, but the reason Google News exists is to boost ad sales to news sites.

Google can show other news sources snips, which will now get better engagement from users. Unless the EU can control Google entirely, it is the French publisher that is hurt by this, not Google.

It would be hilarious if this created a niche in the industry for French news content published outside of Europe but supported by ad content obviously tailored towards French users. Given the profitability of journalism in general, that might be a long shot.

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