A recent Canadian injunction on news mediators like Google has given Indian newspapers and its digital news editions a major force in their fight against the monopolistic exploitation of their news content by Google.
The leading Indian newspaper and its digital editions have been a representation against Google’s alleged abuse of its monopoly and position. According to newspaper sources, Google earns a huge amount of advertising revenue on the content generated by the digital versions of these newspapers. However, there has been no proper payment back or revenue sharing by Google in this regard, causing huge financial loss to news publishers in India.
Online News Acts are being enacted in several countries to give publishers their share of revenue earned by using news publishers’ content by Facebook-owned Meta and Google. Tech companies will have to share revenue from news publishers if this is implemented. France, many countries of the European Union, America and Britain are also making such laws.
In accordance with the Canadian Order, an Online News Act has been enacted to regulate digital news intermediaries with the intention of enhancing fairness in the Canadian digital news market. The act applies to digital news mediators and giants like Google, which have a significant bargaining power imbalance over news businesses, depending on a few factors, such as whether the intermediary is in a dominant market position. The order envisages the provision of fair compensation to news businesses for the news provided by the arbitrator.
The rule would ensure that platforms such as Facebook and Google negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers fairly for their content. Significantly, Australia also passed an unprecedented law last year. The law made it mandatory for Google and Facebook to pay original news publishers for content on their platforms.
Let us tell you that the leading newspapers in India and the Digital News Publishers Association (DNPA) have put this matter before the Competition Commission of India (CCI) against the monopoly of Google. All the major Indian news publishers are among those who have cases in the CCI. These include Hindustan Times, Amar Ujala, Jagran New Media, Dainik Bhaskar, India Today, Indian Express, Times of India, Eenadu, Malayalam Manorama, ABP Network, Zee Media, Mathrubhumi, Hindu, NDTV, Lokmat, Express etc. On receipt of the complaint, the CCI had ordered an inquiry to the Director General on January 7. It was told in the commission that about 50 percent of the traffic of news websites comes from Google. It has started algorithmically deciding which website will appear first and which later. This is a violation of the rules of free competition. It is also the largest shareholder in digital advertisements. He is the one who decides the cost of the advertisements on the publishers’ pages. Google also keeps a large share in the advertisements received from the users who come to the Internet for the content of the publishers.
Hopefully this will prevent tampering of results on search engines. Free competition can be saved from this. Google has been accused of creating negative perceptions by showing fake results and fake news on its Internet search engine.