Google was once the corporate whose motto was “don't be evil.” Well, those days are over.
Last week, A federal judge ruled that the Silicon Valley company is a monopolist that uses its market advantage to suppress competition from serps.
In one other case, The U.S. federal government and eight states, including California, allege that Google has “corrupted legitimate competition” within the technology underlying internet marketing.
Local news organizations are victims of those monopolistic practices. Google not only limits our ability to generate promoting revenue, but additionally uses our news content to drive web traffic to its search page.
Essentially, they put our journalists' work on their website and sell promoting on it. And pocket the profits. Google made greater than $300 billion last yr, most of it from promoting it sells on content it neither created nor paid for.
At the identical time, local journalism is fighting for survival. California alone has lost over 100 newspapers within the last decade, cutting off a flow of data that’s crucial to the survival of local democracy.
Fortunately, state lawmakers are attempting to no less than partially correct this imbalance.
Two bills might be discussed in Parliament this month. The most promising, AB 886authored by Representative Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), would require online platforms like Google and Facebook to share the cash they earn from articles published by local news organizations.
The bill would require journalism organizations to spend no less than 70 percent of California Journalism Preservation Act funds on journalists and support staff. In other words, Google would should stop undermining local journalism and begin supporting it financially.
The idea shouldn’t be recent. Similar laws have already been passed in Canada and Australia, leading to a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments in newsrooms.
Now in its second yr within the Legislature, Wicks' bill passed the Assembly but must still pass the Senate's key budget committee this week. It must pass the complete Senate and return to the Assembly for approval of amendments before the tip of the month.
Another bill, SB 1327, by Senator Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), tackles the identical problem otherwise. It proposes taxing big tech firms on the user data they collect for promoting purposes after which using the tax revenue to support news publications.
It's clear that change is required. Google abandoned its motto of altruism way back. Only motion by lawmakers can curb this behavior. We're in the ultimate month of the legislative session. Now is the time to do it.
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