Google claims that news is essentially worthless to its ad business and that publishers “vastly overestimate the value of their journalism to its business.
Quick Backstory: Google has faced criticism from various governments for benefiting from news content without adequately compensating publishers. In response, the EU, France, and Australia have introduced or proposed legislation to require Google to pay publishers for their content or negotiate licensing agreements. In 2019, the European Copyright Directive was passed, which created new rights for news publishers when extended previews of their work are used online. To comply with the law's provisions, Google rolled out a licensing program in Europe that compensated publishers. Since then it has been pressured to publish additional data about the value of this content to Google.
Flash Forward: Beginning in November 2024, the company conducted a test that removed news from search results for 1% of users for 2.5 months in eight European markets. Per the report, Google says the actual value “could not be statically distinguished from zero, either overall or by country.”
“The data showed that Search ad revenue did not change despite daily average users (DAUs) declining by 0.8 percent, which is consistent with users continuing to use Google for more commercial queries even as they used it less for news queries.”
Honestly it makes sense.
If I search “laptops for sale” or “best laptops 2025,” there's obvious buyer intent, which leads to demand from advertisers.
However if I search “Trump's FTC firing,” there are no ads displayed. Who's supposed to buy an ad for that?
Google will likely use the outcome of its experiment as leverage in payment negotiations with European publishers.
In other News Publishers vs Big Tech news…
Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, and X co-signed a request for the US government to step in to help them push back against what they've labeled “discriminatory” Australian media laws that require US tech companies to “subsidize Australian media companies.” In 2021, the Australian government implemented its News Media Bargaining Code, which requires social apps and search engines to pay local publishers for any use of their content, including links to their sites, aiming to redistribute some of the money brought in by those platforms from the publishers.