After a two-and-a-half-month test in eight European markets, Google has concluded that news content in search “has no measurable impact” on its ad business.
During the test, 1% of users were offered search results that did not include news material, revealing minimal impact on ad performance. Google said that the actual value “could not be statistically distinguished from zero, either overall or by country.”
The search giant conducted the test because European copyright law is requiring it to pay news publishers for reusing snippets of its content. The company was also fined US$500 million in 2021 by French competition regulators for failing to comply with an order to negotiate fair agreements with news publishers for the use of its content.
Following the recent test, Google argued that European news publishers “vastly overestimate” the value of their journalism to its business, aiming to use these findings to gain an upper hand in ongoing payment negotiations with them.
Google also faces other substantial antitrust fines outside Europe. In Canada, the company reached an agreement with the Canadian government regarding the Online News Act (Bill C-18) in 2023, agreeing to fairly compensate news outlets for content usage. As a result, Google has been allocating $100 million to Canadian news organizations via its partnership with the Canadian Journalism Collective, starting last June.
Google must also submit its tax return by June 30 to comply with the Digital Services Tax act (DST). The DST, which went into effect last June, imposes a 3% levy on the revenue that foreign tech giants generate from online users in Canada. The tax applies to businesses operating online marketplaces, advertising services, social media platforms and those selling user data.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Google is embroiled in a long-running antitrust battle with the Department of Justice, which has asked the company to divest its Chrome browser as part of the lawsuit filed during Trump’s first term in office. The suit accuses Google of monopolistic behavior in online search and advertising, having paid several million dollars to companies such as Apple to secure its position as the default search engine on mobile devices and browsers.
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