Among the various massive tech stories victory is once again in the cards of Google. According to the latest reports in The New York Times, Google earned a whopping sum of $4.7 billion from the work of journalists in 2018 through Google search and News content. Is not this something big than the combined ticket sale of Avengers movie. Well yes! It is.
However, from the past several years various newspaper shops are shutting doors and big media houses are handing their work to journalists worldwide, and in this situation Google alone made $4.7 billion from its Search and digital adverting news that the search engine even not owns in 2018 — The sum is nearly as much as the entire US news industry earning for a complete year. The rise of Google news function was not predictable till time. So the big question here arises that whether Google is wrongly getting benefits from other people’s work.
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According to David Chavern, President and chief executive of the alliance – “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,” he said.
Current Dynamics
The complete study also reveals the significance of news to Google’s income stream as more than 40 % of clicks within trending queries are related to the new content part. It is the news that Google does not make, and this part is pulling a huge sum of money from an industry that has been overwhelmed by the erosion of advertising space. In this digital era, every reader is shifting their habits from print media to digital media for news. The amount of sum that Google has earned in 2018 is almost as much as the $5.1 billion brought in by the US news industry as an entire from their digital advertising last year.
To all these speculations David Chavern said that: “News is an important form of content that sustains civic society,” and “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 added. At present, David Chavern is representing over 2,000 newspapers across the country, including The New York Times.
For now, Google is not replying to a request for comment for this news and the tech giant is keeping much of its data about its revenues and algorithm in a black box. Even though the last 10 years have been a dark phase for the print media industry, but this not signifies that all companies are failing. Most of the people are dependent on these two giant companies Google’s, and Facebook for the news part as both are major distributors for all news publishers. Both companies ship more than 80 percent of outside traffic to an assortment of sites. As a product, the original news outlets have lost a vital source of profits from the last couple of decades, which has led them to a huge loss or disappear.
