We’ve followed the music deals and clashes of Facebook, Google and other big tech companies with diligence, but we keep a watching eye on how these firms are interacting with other creative and media industries. Two stories today reflect the deals and, yes, the clashes with the news publishing world.
News Corporation’s senior executives have frequently taken public potshots at Google, but now the companies are making up with a global agreement. News Corp will “provide trusted journalism from its news sites around the world in return for significant payments by Google”. The three-year deal will also see the pair developing a subscription news platform; sharing ad revenue; and some “meaningful investments in innovative video journalism by YouTube”.
In 2015, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson gave a zinger-laden speech about Google. “That Google’s newly conceived parent company is to be called Alphabet has itself created a range of delicious permutations: A is for Avarice, B is for Bowdlerise, through to K for Kleptocracy, P for Piracy and Z for Zealotry,” he said then. And now? He says the deal will have “a positive impact on journalism around the globe as we have firmly established that there should be a premium for premium journalism”.
Meanwhile, over at Facebook there is less sweetness and light, amid a new proposed ‘Media Bargaining Law’ in Australia that would force tech companies to negotiate with and pay news publishers for their content. Facebook is now pressing its nuclear button: it will “restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content” while ditching its plans to “launch Facebook News in Australia and significantly increase our investments with local publishers”.
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