Google Supports the News Industry(australia.googleblog.com) |
Google Supports the News Industry(australia.googleblog.com) |
Google can render their own proprietary page format more rapidly than a normal page, when it’s been loaded down with advertising and tracking anyways.
That performance difference results in a ranking boost for sites using AMP versus their normal site. They could get the same ranking boost by simply using first-party ads and dropping all the tracking cruft, but for whatever reason AMP is an easier sale to them.
The fight against AMP is difficult because Google is leveraging publisher greed for tracking data to sell them on a lock-in proprietary format, and trying to argue against AMP from a web health perspective goes nowhere because it’s not focusing on the problem of publisher greed for tracking data.
EU Copyright Directive is requiring tech giants to license the right to reproduce copyrighted material on their own websites. It could make it impossible for Google to display brief snippets and photos from news stories in its search results without paying the news sites.
As a consumer, I find it difficult to form a clear opinion about it:
At one side, I don't want Google to become too powerful and can filter what reaches me as "news". It is also not fair that Google is earning disproportionate amount of money by facilitating search on the content of news agencies while they aren't getting anything.
At the other side, I want to easily find different sources for news with different perspectives and I don't want to be dependent to a couple of big news agencies like AP and Reuters.
I guess there is simply no black and white solution and that a balance needs to be struck with policy for distributing the power in a weighted way between the different actors.
I would never trust any plan from Google, especially one that claims to be "supporting" the news industry.