Dana Blankenhorn

Google News Briar Patch

The newspaper industry is as excited as can be over news that Australia has passed a law “requiring” Google to pay for news links. Europe is on deck. They want in on the action.

I’ve written about this scam before.  It’s coming from Rupert Murdoch, who controls the Australian media. Most of the money that Google (and Facebook) will pay for news links in Australia will go to Murdoch and his global propaganda machine, not to keeping reporters fed.

So why was Google willing to be tossed into this briar patch? Because it lets them finally monetize Google News, and more thoroughly monetize a related service, Google Now. If Murdoch is going to charge Google for links to his stuff, Google is going to get its money back.

News has been ad-free for over a decade now. It’s great. Tells you, in broad strokes, what’s going on. It lets you try to go deeper. Increasingly, not much deeper. Paywalls have become commonplace on every beat. You click a link and what you want is covered up with a demand to subscribe.

You Won’t Read This

You won’t read this because I’m in Twitmo.

My account was suspended a week ago. Repeated e-mails to Twitter support have gotten no real response.

Twitter has a legal right to do this. They are under no legal obligation to explain it.

But there is a moral responsibility.

Twitter has become a vital publicity stream for millions of people around the world. I didn’t realize until last week just how vital it was. The free web continues to shrink in size, and Twitter is an increasing part of it. In some ways it has taken the place of Google. We go to Twitter to learn what’s happening in the world. The only force that can compete with it is Reddit.

I blame Trump for that. Trump and his Trumpkins stole all our attention for years, and Twitter is where that attention was both focused and blasted into the world. Twitter’s banning of Trump was a turning point. The stock is up since it happened.

Rupert Murdoch Blackmails the Web

Rupert Murdoch has always hated the Web. It has always threatened his control of public opinion and his political dominance, a dominance I consider this century’s greatest evil.

But he’s mostly had to suck eggs. His efforts to buy into the Web have come to nothing. This is the guy who destroyed MySpace. His Realtor.com is worth less than he paid for it.

That’s changed thanks to a classic Rupert Murdoch strategy. Political blackmail.

Australia has gotten Google to hand “news sources” (half of them owned by Murdoch) cash for hyperlinks to stories. Expect this to come to the U.S. as well, although for now The New York Times is soft pedaling it, but you can hear the cheering inside its story. It’s what incumbent news organizations want – money for nothing.

The result may seem small. The payments give Google a route to putting ads on its Google News and Google Now services. This may even improve them, as readers now see headlines leading to a lot of paywalls.

But a precedent has been set. You can get money for letting people link to your stuff. The free web can be blackmailed. Instead of fighting for the free web, the press is attacking Facebook, which is resisting the blackmail. 

It’s all part of a process by which the Internet is being forced to dance to incumbents’ tune, whatever that tune happens to be. In a democratic society like Australia this may not seem bad. In China, it’s evil. Even in a democracy like India it can turn evil when the elected government chooses to black out news on its opponents.

The Web, in short, is being balkanized. The free web is being destroyed. And no one, not even journalists who should be its advocates, is objecting.