French want Google to pay to link to websites
THE latest installment of the Gallic incomprehension of the most basic pieces of economics is that they want to charge Google for indexing the French newspapers. Something that is really very absurd indeed.
France’s new government has been making noise about forcing Google to pay for the privilege of linking to French news sites.
Erm, what?
Google responded by threatening to remove all French news sites from its index, which would presumably eliminate the 4 billion clicks it sends to those sites every year.
Let’s see now. The French newspapers get 4 billion clicks a year coming to them through Google news. Let’s say is $10 per/000 that they earn from people viewing their pages. That is a reasonable number, yes. So that’s $40 million that the French newspapers are getting because Google sends people their way.
How much does Google make out of this though? Perhaps Google is making some much larger sum than this off doing the sending? Hmm, well, as Google.fr/news doesn’t actually carry any advertising at all I think we can conclude that Google is making nowt out of running the French news site.
So, the intention is that Google has to pay for making nothing out of sending the French newspapers $40 million a year?
As I say, these Froggies really haven’t quite grasped this economics thing as yet, have they?
And do note that any French newspaper can opt out of getting the Google traffic any time they like. They just have to alter their robots.txt file. That they don’t shows that they rather like having the traffic.
Posted: 27th, October 2012 | In: Money, Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
