Should Google Be Forced To Pay For News?

Barence writes "The Guardian Media group is asking the British government to investigate Google News and other aggregators, claiming they reap the benefit of content from news sites without contributing anything towards their costs. The Guardian claims the old argument that 'search engines and aggregators provide players like guardian.co.uk with traffic in return for the use of our content' doesn't hold water any more, and that it's 'heavily skewed' in Google's favour. It wants the government to explore new models that 'require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site (through advertising) and "at the edges" in the world of search and aggregation.'"

Comments

Why is every 2 bit operation . . . .

[WhiteWolf666]

. . . crying out for a government investigation to figure out "new business" models for them.

For god sakes; provide a relevant service to consumers who are willing to pay for them, or *go out of business*!

The dot com bubble saw a million different companies that tried to sell things that nobody wanted, and each one of those companies cried a river of tears before it evaporated. Some of them even had a few promising ideas, just poor execution.

I'm afraid were about to see a bailout bubble, with huge valuations applied to ancient, dying companies that have no real value except for a "Too Big to Fail" stamp.

Value means you contribute, and generate wealth, preferably for everyone (customers, employees, management, and owners). When Value is defined as, "I hold your economy hostage, you better keep me alive," something is dramatically wrong.