Towards the end of last year, Google said it would be running tests at the request of publishers and regulators to learn how news content in Google affects users’ usage of Google’s products. The company has now published the results of this small test in a lengthy report.
To conduct the test, Google altered its results for 1% of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. These users saw news content from European news sources removed from results to see what impact it would have. Now the results are in.
Google says that there was no change to search ad revenue and a 0.8% drop in usage of Google Search as a result. Google said that “any lost usage was from queries that generated minimal or no revenue.”
Adopting quite a combative tone, Google said that during negotiations with the EU over the European Copyright Directive (EUCD), it saw many “inaccurate reports” that “vastly overestimate the value of news content to Google.” Its results seem to suggest the opposite, that the news content doesn’t make too much of a difference.
With that said, it’s important to note that this test only ran for a couple of months, so we do not know what impact being continually denied access to quality journalism would have had on users over a longer period. People could have started checking social media more for their news or switched to an unaffected search engine.
Despite the results, Google said that it has tried to support the news ecosystem as it transitions to digital as part of its commitment to a “vibrant and healthy content ecosystem” and promises to carry on forming these partnerships going forward to help them reach more audiences.
The search giant could use these findings as ammunition in discussions with regulators and publishers going forward to prevent actions it deems too excessive.
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