Search engine giant, Google, made a whopping $4.7 billion from the work of reporters last year via search and Google News.
This took a huge cut from the online ad revenue of media houses which lost a crucial source of income, resulting in many of them getting shrunk or closed, a report said yesterday.
News is a significant part of Google’s business, according to a study to be released next week by the News Media Alliance (NMA) which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the US.
The journalists who create that content deserve a cut of that $4.7 billion, president and chief executive of the NMA David Chavern was quoted as saying by The New York Times.
The California-based internet giant made the cash from the work of news publishers last year via search and Google News, it said.
That $4.7 billion is nearly as much as the $5.1 billion brought in by the United States news industry as a whole from digital advertising last year, the report said.
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The NMA cautioned that its estimate for Google’s income was conservative. For one thing, it does not count the value of the personal data the company collects on consumers every time they click on an article like this one.
“They make money off this arrangement and there needs to be a better outcome for news publishers,” Chavern said.
“The study blatantly illustrates what we all know so clearly and so painfully,” said Terrance C Z Egger, the chief executive of Philadelphia Inquirer PBC, which publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and philly.com.
“The current dynamics in the relationships between the platforms and our industry are devastating,” Egger said.
The NMA is making the study public in advance of a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday on the interrelationship of big tech companies and the media.