In order to better understand this complex fight between Big Tech, governments and news publishers, we’ll explore three vital questions:
- Why Google agreed to pay news companies while FB did not?
- Will this reset the relation between news publishers and Big Tech news aggregators?
- Why is it important for India and the world?
Why Google Agreed to Pay News Companies While FB Did Not
Facebook estimates that only about 4 percent of posts on the network is news content. Google says news-related queries accounted for just over 1 percent of the total queries in Australia.
So, to answer the first question: why did Google cave while Facebook refuses to pay news companies? Make no mistake, Google threatened to take a more extreme step than Facebook and pull out its search service altogether from Australia. So, why did Google not go the Facebook way?
Simply put, Facebook can afford to do it but Google can’t. Search is what Google cares about and removing links to news stories from Google would…