Last week Google announced a billion dollar investment that will be used to build “partnerships” with news publishers and invest in the “future of news.”

Google, you will recall, became effectively the world’s biggest media company without producing or owning any content – simply by running ads against other people’s work. Google has made billions from the work of news publishers for over a decade.

In 2018, for example, Google made $4.7B in ad revenue from running ads against third party news content. Meanwhile it’s the news companies who took all the risk: funding news gathering, putting journalists in harms way. They then effectively turned around and gave their content to Google for free, trading revenues for eyeballs.

Google abused its market position but the media organisations let this happen to them, The result? Since 2004, 1800 US newspapers have gone extinct since 2004

Newspapers in US

2004: 8891

2018: 7112

Given that Google made $125bn in ad revenue in 2019, pledging $1bn to news publishers in 2020 amounts to little more than a sick joke. The donation is timed to coincide to hearings in Washington seeking to investigate Google’s monopolistic business moves.  In return for the cash, Google are hoping for favourable coverage.

But until Google’s anti-trust behaviour is properly held to account one thing holds true: it’s good to be  a Google shareholder. Sucks to be anyone else.

Posted in: Infographic of the day