The claim that we're making big profits on the back of newspapers also misrepresents the reality. In search, we make our money primarily from advertisements for products. Someone types in digital camera and gets ads for digital cameras. A typical news search for Afghanistan, say may generate few if any ads. The revenue generated from the ads shown alongside news search queries is a tiny fraction of our search revenue.
This argument is disingenuous.
Sure, the big G doesn't make any money off of news searches. But the triple-A content provided by newspapers are what makes Google so useful in the first place.
Google is then able to monetize its relationship with users when they do highly profitable product searches. It's like people going to the gas station and picking up a candy bar from the convenience store (where all the money is made.)
This argument is disingenuous.
Sure, the big G doesn't make any money off of news searches. But the triple-A content provided by newspapers are what makes Google so useful in the first place.
Google is then able to monetize its relationship with users when they do highly profitable product searches. It's like people going to the gas station and picking up a candy bar from the convenience store (where all the money is made.)