Oh no...I didn’t think this would actually happen. That the UK passed a requirement for Google to have to pay publishers to show news snippets. The whole point is to show that content to help people find what they are looking for. May the best writer win.
The legislation is written in the name of protecting and promoting businesses and media by way of paying them to display their content, but is all backwards. We LIKE showing up in Google search results! No need to pay us! The point is for readers and customers to hit our websites. We don’t care that this is Google’s way of making money - that they post ads against the content. Paying us to show that content to display ads against is just chump change at best, bottlenecking and mayhem and Google pulling out at worst!
This is bad for publishers. Both in news media and for businesses who use content strategy to rank in Google. Enforcing this is too difficult. Illogical. How will Google get the payment information from every single little and big website it displays? As a little website at Tin Shingle (in the grand scheme of things), we have outranked lots of big websites. So this is not a David and Goliath game. Don’t let this happen in the U.S. !
A proper article is to come about this as we dig into what was passed and how it is supposed to work. But we wanted to let you know about this now. It has been kicking around since at least the time that Zuckerberg appeared before UK and US lawmakers. And a year later, has been voted in.
