It is a new redesign – Google wants to spread $1 billion to media outlets around the world. Facebook had also flown a similar plan. Yes, aggregators are providing help to the disintermediated, and that is a good thing. But never think Google has become Father Christmas. It knows the temperature and feels the heat: the regulators are circling Google, and it needs to stay ahead of them with this ignition gift.
Google is implementing a new licensing program that will enable it to pay news media outlets for their contents. The program will take more than $1 billion over the next three years.
The Silicon Valley giant has signed licensing deals with about 200 publications in select countries with plans to add more and expand geographically.
The program is part of Google’s attempt to address the challenge of poor revenue generation hitting news organizations, especially in the COVID-19 era. The crippling impact the pandemic unleashed on the global economy, forced news organizations to take drastic measures, including downsizing, to stay in business.
Hello Nigeria’s consumer watchdog, a small shaking of Google Nigeria will open this wallet for Punch, Guardian, Thisday, Sun and Vanguard. If not, they get nothing. The problem I have articulated in my “Law of Diminishing Abundance of Internet.” Nigeria needs to make noise to get the attention of Google as it shares this money to save media!
Law of Diminishing Abundance of Internet: It is a construct that some companies become poorer even when they are growing in numbers of customers reached. That applies to industrial sectors like publishing and telecoms. The lesson here is that risk in any business model must be examined from the lens of this mirage abundance which Internet has provided in some sectors.
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There are tens of thousands of media organisations across the globe, and it may be unrealistic for Google to ‘settle’ all of them, so I expect Google to come up with a criteria, perhaps based on the pull of each media outlet.
And if that becomes the case, some Nigerian media outlets will make the cut, all they need is to position well and follow the money.
You don’t need to push Google too much, before it secretly ‘banishes’ you from its ecosystem, not sure any regulator can understand the complex algorithms Google uses internally in its decision-making; no one needs to overplay his/her hand on this one.