News Media Europe has taken note of Google’s blog post “Providing more data about news results in the EU” (link).

Google did not inform News Media Europe of their endeavour prior to the publication of this blog post, and as far as we know, our members weren’t informed either.

The importance of news content in Google’s revenue model has been a long-running point of discussion, with Google so far showing little transparency. Google’s unilateral announcement that news content is suppressed by Google on its services within certain EU Member States as an experiment is unacceptable. We have serious concerns about the impact of this action to our sector. What is the aim of this experiment? What research methodology is being used? For how long? These questions must be answered.

For years, tech platforms have systematically downplayed the value of our press with little to no substantiation or justification. In the case of a dominant party like Google, it is crucial that any research is done in consultation with publishers, independently tested, and results shared publicly.

For more information, please contact Wout van Wijk