Time for Google to pay for news

It tried the stick, now maybe it’s leaning towards the carrot instead.

Not long ago, technology giant Google had some harsh threats for Australia: in January, as that country moved forward to pass legislation forcing Google and other social media giants to pay for news content, Google threatened to pull its search engine out of the country altogether.

Australia’s legislation would have required Google — and others — to go through mediated negotiations to settle on a value of news content.

At Australian Senate hearings into the new law, Google Australia’s managing director Mel Silva said, “If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.”

(That’s the stick part. But it’s far from the end of the story.)

SETTLEMENT IN FRANCE

In other countries that have threatened legislation, like France, Google has already settled with media outlets, agreeing to pay for the content that Google uses to sell advertising.

And in Australia, things now seem to be going the same way: as the bill passed the Australian House of Representatives and seemed poised to pass the Senate, Google started making a stream of deals with Australian news media companies, including a $30-million-ayear deal with Australia’s largest media conglomerate, Nine Entertainment. Other massive media agencies, like News Corp., with operations in Britain, the U.S. and Australia, have announced they are signing deals with Google.

And all because of the risks the new Australian law entails. (Facebook, meanwhile, has stayed with the stick, shutting off Facebook pages in Australia on Wednesday that offer news.)

CANADA PREPARING LEGISLATION

That’s all interesting news for the beleaguered news industry in Canada, where the agencies that actually produce news have watched the advertising profits from their work get eaten up by the Googles and Facebooks of the world.

It’s especially interesting because Canada’s on the edge of putting together its own law requiring social media and digital giants to pay for the work they piggyback their own paid advertising on.

Federal Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault is preparing legislation of his own for the spring that would also require digital giants to pay for the work done by other media outlets, and even before Google starting making deals, he was watching the Australian model play out.

“What they’re doing from a very detailed point of view is of great interest to us,” he told the Globe and Mail.

It should be interesting to everybody. The fact is that researching, preparing and writing news costs money — and those who use it, including digital giants, should have to pay for what they use.