Google Experiment: News? Nobody Cares So Ad Impact Is Zero, Baby, Zero
March 24, 2025
Dinobaby, here. No smart software involved unlike some outfits.
I enjoy reading statistically valid wizard studies from monopolistic outfits. “Our Experiment on the Value of European News Content” reports a wonderful result: Nobody cares if Googzilla does not index “real” news. That’s it. The online ad outfit conclusively proves that “real” news is irrelevant.
The write up explains:
The results have now come in: European news content in Search has no measurable impact on ad revenue for Google. The study showed that when we removed this content, there was no change to Search ad revenue and a <1% (0.8%) drop in usage, which indicates that any lost usage was from queries that generated minimal or no revenue. Beyond this, the study found that combined ad revenue across Google properties, including our ad network, also remained flat.
What should those with a stake in real news conclude? From my point of view, Google is making crystal clear that publishers need to shut up or else. What’s the “else”? Google stops indexing “real” news sites. Where will those “real” news sites get traffic. Bear Blog, a link from YCombinator Hacker News, a Telegram Group, Twitter, or TikTok?
Sure, absolutely.
Several observations:
- Fool around with a monopoly in the good old days, and some people would not have a train stop at their town in Iowa or the local gas stations cannot get fuel. Now it is search traffic. Put that in your hybrid.
- Google sucks down data. Those who make data available to the Google are not likely to be invited to the next Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show.
- Google will continue to flip the digital bird at the EU, stopping when the lawsuits go away and publishers take their medicine and keep quiet. The crying and whining is annoying.
One has to look forward to Google’s next research study, doesn’t one?
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2025
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