Having enjoyed astronomical profits for years from news content on their platforms, hasn’t it once crossed the minds of the big guns at Google, Meta, etc. that they should start paying for what they use?

Alphabet Inc.? It was established in October 2015. What’s its background? Not much! It was created to be Google’s parent. How large is it? In 2022, Fortune magazine ranked it 17th in the world with a turnover of US$282.8 billion, $74.8 billion in pre-tax profit and $365.3 billion in total assets.

Google is the world’s largest search engine with over 10 billion hits per day with a predominant global market share of 90.82% (probably excluding China’s Baidu). Its closest competitors Bing, Yahoo and Yandex have a combined market share of only 7.5%.

For such an enormous “super monster,” its revenue has derived from corporate advertisements, online shopping and clicks, while online sales platforms, news media reports, YouTube videos, etc. are its principal suppliers.

Google’s revenue comes from online advertisements as well as web users’ clicks creating traffic. The thing is, it prospers only if web users “google” for information, and indeed everyone does that every day!

News media and search engines have a close-knit relationship which Alphabet or Google should be very well aware of. If the search engine is flooded with shopping ads, it is a matter of time consumers will start to get tremendously annoyed.

That being said, has Google ever thought of the “user pays” principle? Shouldn’t it pay news media a small royalty fee out of its ginormous $74.8 billion annual profit?

Print media across the globe have been struggling to stay afloat these past few years, thanks to Google’s gigantic search engine. News that will only go to print tomorrow is already available online and accessible to readers worldwide. Who will read news that is no longer piping hot after 24 hours?

To be honest, newspapers are doing unpaid work for search engines. Is Google not feeling any grateful or indebted? To negotiate with the colossal, deep-pocketed monster mastering in the “zero-sum game” is an uphill task with little prospect of gaining the upper hand.

But does it therefore mean news media can do nothing at all about Google? Not really, as there appears to be a feeble ray of hope out there!

Last Tuesday, we read that New York Times would receive $100 million from Google over the next three years. Among the terms they agreed upon, Alphabet’s Google is allowed to put NYT’s content on some of its platforms. Additionally, NYT will have to use only Google’s tools for its content distribution, subscription, advertising and marketing. Sounds great for both parties!

Earlier, Australia drew up the News Media Bargaining Code under which major Internet platforms operating in the country must pay local news organizations for publishing their content.

This law has understandably met with powerful resistance from Google and Facebook, with the former at one point threatening to pull out from the Australian market. However, Microsoft was then supportive of the law.

On February 18, 2021, Facebook barred its Australian users from reading or sharing news content on its platform. A few days later, the Australian government amended the bill, and Facebook and Google subsequently agreed to pay the local news publishers.

Following that, Facebook allowed its Australian users to continue reading and sharing news content on its platform.

The Australian parliament officially adopted the bill on February 25, 2021, putting an end to this whole thing.

Australia was the first country in the world to have enacted laws to require named digital platforms (Google and Facebook) to abide by the country’s laws and the “user pays” principle.

The precedent Down Under has since prompted several other governments to do the same, signing similar agreements with the tech giants.

Among them Canada has introduced a bill on fee-based online news in hope of helping Canadian journalists struggling in such challenging times.

Communications and digital minister Ahmad Fahmi Mohamed Fadzil said the government is currently studying the models of Australia, Canada and other countries on how to get tech giants in the likes of Google and Meta to pay local media organizations.

Although negotiations on payment for news usage have yet to take off, at least the government has started studying the relevant bill.

We hope the government is not just doing the talking, as we really need the government to come forward and play a pivotal role in the negotiations, as individual media organizations like us are really no match for these giants!