Google to pay 60 million euros into French media fund | Hacker News Reader

Google to pay 60 million euros into French media fund

reuters.com

27 pointsbarredo18 comments

HN Headline: Google inks deal on payment of French media links (reuters.com)

Title on Reuters: Google to pay 60 million euros into French media fund

Subhead on Reuters: Google... will not pay them for posting links to their content.

Article content says publishers had been pushing for payment for links and snippets, and Google was threatened with legislation to pay for links, but instead settled on this fund to help the publishers make more money using Google's advertising technology (kind of like a $60M version of the $100 AdWords leads.)

Troubles me that informative submission titles are so often elided, while ones suggesting the opposite of the article's intent can be left as is.

Damn it. What the hell happened to the Google who pulled out of China over censorship? When did they start negotiating with terrorists?

When victory is not certain. Google could risk losing complete access to X country's content if X's court system rules against Google. Not every country cares as much about Freedom of Speech as the USA, and aging court justices are unlikely to understand the nuances of technology.

Google isn't a charity, time to start remembering that.

With all due respect, America doesn't seem any better in regards to technology than Europe. For example the European commission are rewriting the Data Protection Act which seems like a great sign.

Sergey lost.

This doesn't seem to be demanding any censorship, though. I doubt Google would've pulled out of China if the only thing China were demanding was some kind of fee be paid into a media fund.

>No details of the deal were immediately available.

I would wait for the details.

Edit: Here they are: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/google-creates-60m-di...

> Google has agreed to create a €60 million Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.

While I disagree in principle with Google having to pay at all, this doesn't seem as bad to me as some kind of revenue share that I was expecting. If it takes a one-time payment to just get this out of the way, that seems less evil.

> Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.

This part worries me though because it's ambiguous.

Here's google's take on it: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/google-creates-60m-di...

(And here's a smoother-loading version: https://www.readability.com/articles/q8x2ifi3?legacy_bookmar... )

Wow, terrible precedent being set here. Now any France based startup that wants to take on Google with their own media linking service will be overwhelmed by fees before they can even get up and running. I really wish Google hadn't caved to these demands...

It's not Google's job to protect the rights of other companies. Plus, the way you phrase it, you're say that you wish Google would have held out to make it easier for future competitors to upset them.

Sure the outcome sucks, but your comment is actually defending a point opposite to the one you intend.

Presumably that deal involved this http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/google-creates-60m-di... so it's possible that there may not really be much caving at all involved here.

Why didn't they do the `if you keep asking, then we'll delist you' trick again?

mes amis, extorquer de Google ce que vous, mais il ne va pas changer votre modèle d'affaires.

Only in Europe would a cartel of newspapers be aided by the government in extorting a foreign company without anyone crying foul.

If I were Google I would include a clause demanding positive coverage - seeing as they are paying for the damn news.

To be fair, when Google or [insert corp here] operates in France it is not a foreign company. Google could pull out of France if they wanted to, otherwise they have to respect local laws and regulations.

I don't agree with the French media co demands but then Google (and Bing) do exploit content in an unfair way, like showing full images on their sites, making a visit to the image creator less likely. Now that people use search engines to find content it's easy to say "block them"...

There's more in the balance, Google is facing a huge tax case: http://www.france24.com/en/20121121-france-google-confident-...

I am far from understanding the details of this, but it involves channeling money and contracts to Ireland, where taxes are lower. French radio has been revealing that some of these operations are not fully legal.

At the risk of being wrong, what Google (and others) have been doing in France, here in the UK etc, is legal - I believe under EU law. The governments probably can't do much, but some people are a bit annoyed about their ridiculously low tax contributions. Perhaps they've gone further in France than they did here though.

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