MUMBAI: A whopping $4.7 billion was made by Google via search and Google News from the work of journalists during the year 2018, almost matching the industry which made an estimated $5.1 billion spread across hundreds of companies, according to the study conducted by News Media Alliance.
The study also claims that the numbers are conservative as it cannot put a value to the personal data that Google collects when a person clicks on the link. It also represented more than 2,000 newspapers and websites across the US that Google makes money from through content that it does not even create. With the rise of social media, nearly 80 per cent of news traffic is sent via Google and Facebook.
According to the New York Times, Alliance president and chief executive David Chavern said, "The journalists who create that content deserve a cut of that $4.7 billion. They make money off this arrangement and there needs to be a better outcome for news publishers."
Google has not yet commented on the study. The News Media Alliance would reportedly make the study public on Tuesday, according to the reports.
Meanwhile, New York Magazine has added that despite the boom for companies like Google and Facebook, not all the mainstream media companies were failing. The Washington Post and New York Times had a profitable last few years. However, it also added that one in five local papers in the US has closed since 2004 and from 2008 to 2017 newsroom employment declined by 23 per cent.
Some 40 per cent of the clicks on Google's trending queries are for news. That's content that Google does not pay for, the report said, although it often presents headlines from news outlets verbatim.
Google should rightly acknowledge the contribution made by news agencies to its revenue. Two giant companies — Alphabet, which is Google's parent, and Facebook — are major distributors for news publishers.
Chavern added that the big tech companies like this business because someone else writes for them. He hoped that an outcome of any conversation generated by the study would be the passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act which would give news publishers a four-year antitrust exemption, allowing them to collectively bargain with the owners of online platforms over revenue splitting.
"News is an important form of content that sustains civic society. I think everybody from readers to writers to politicians understands that if journalism goes away, that's a horrible outcome for whether we're able to sustain the republic," he said.
