Last week, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp sent an open letter to the European Commission complaining about Google. We wanted to share our perspective so you can judge the arguments on their merits.

News Corp:
“The Internet should be a canvas for freedom of expression and for high quality content of enduring value.”

Google:
We agree about free expression and the importance of high quality content. Access to information in any given country, particularly news content, used to be controlled by a relatively small number of media organizations. Today, people have far greater choice. That has had a profound impact on newspapers, who face much stiffer competition for people’s attention and for advertising Euros.

Google has worked hard to help publishers succeed online -- both in terms of generating new audiences and also increasing their digital revenues. Our search products drive over 10 billion clicks a month to 60,000 publishers’ websites, and we share billions of dollars annually with advertising publishing partners. We’ve also created a digital store on Android -- Google Play -- that lets news publishers offer their publications for purchase or subscription. We hope this will also increase their audience and digital revenues. In addition, we invest in initiatives like Google’s Journalism Fellowships, and help train thousands of journalists through our Google for Media program.

News Corp:
Google is a “platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks” and “a company that boasts about its ability to track traffic [but] chooses to ignore the unlawful and unsavoury content that surfaces after the simplest of searches”

Google:
Google has done more than almost any other company to help tackle online piracy.

  • Search: In 2013 we removed 222 million web pages from Google Search due to copyright infringement. The average take-down time is now just six hours. And we downgrade websites that regularly violate copyright in our search rankings.
  • Video: We’ve invested tens of millions of dollars in innovative technology -- called ContentID -- to tackle piracy on YouTube.

Google is also an industry leader in combating child sexual abuse imagery online. We use hashing technology to remove illegal imagery from all our products and from the search index. We have safe modes for both Search and YouTube that filter out inappropriate content. And we are committed to protecting our users’ security. It’s why we remove malware from our search results and other products, and protect more than 1 billion users every day from phishing and malware with our Safe Browsing warnings.

News Corp:
Google’s “power” makes it hard for people to “access information independently and meaningfully.” Google is “willing to exploit [its] dominant market position to stifle competition.”

Google:
With the Internet, people enjoy greater choice than ever before -- and because the competition is just one click away online, barriers to switching are very, very low. Google is of course very popular in Europe, but we are not the gatekeeper to the web, as some claim.

  • Direct traffic: Huge numbers of readers go direct to news sites such as the wsj.com or thesun.co.uk.
  • New ways to access information: As The Economist reported last week “mobile devices have changed the way people travel the Internet. Users now prefer apps (self contained programmes on smartphones) to websites’ home pages”. In this world Google Search is an app alongside many others. The same article adds “the rise of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest … have become an important navigation system for people looking for content across the Web”. It’s why many newspapers get an increasing number of referrals from Facebook and Twitter.
  • Search competition: Within search Google faces a lot of competition: including Amazon for product search; Kayak and Expedia for flights; and Yelp and TripAdvisor for local information. While companies like Expedia and Yelp object to us providing direct answers to users' questions, their revenues, profit and traffic from Google continue to grow. 
And when it comes to our answers versus other websites, Larry Page, our co-founder, has always believed that the perfect search engine would "understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want."  Initially, ten blue links were the best answer we could give.  But now we have the ability to provide direct answers to users' queries, which is much quicker and easier for them. If you are searching for the weather, you want the weather where you are, on the results page, not just links to weather sites.  Or directions: if your query is "where is the nearest pharmacy?", you want a map with directions, not just links to other sites.  This is especially important on mobile where screens are smaller and typing is harder.

News Corp:
“Sudden changes are made to the ranking and display of Google search results, which inevitably maximise income for Google and yet punish small companies that have become dependent on Google for their livelihood.”

Google:
Of course we regularly change our algorithms -- we make over 500 changes a year.  But these changes are all about improving the user experience, not punishing small companies.  Indeed, it's well documented that the highest-profile change to our search ranking, called “Panda”, actually reduced our advertising revenue. As Yelp, another complainant to the EC, said on a recent earnings call: “Where we have the largest communities in the U.S., we’ve seen actually an uptick as a result of the recent Google algorithmic change. They’re constantly making changes and alterations ... and most of that really, on a day-to-day basis, doesn’t have a material effect”.

News Corp:
“Google has developed a "certification" process for Android-related products which allows it to delay or deny content companies and other businesses access to the mobile operating system, while giving itseIf the freedom to develop competing products.”

Google:
Android is an open-source operating system that can be used free-of-charge by anyone. You don’t need Google’s permission. If hardware manufacturers want to offer applications via Google Play, our digital apps store, we simply ask that they meet a minimum technical standard to ensure these apps run smoothly and securely across a range of Android-powered devices. This is good for users and for app developers.  Many manufacturers, including Amazon and Nokia, choose to install their own apps stores on their Android-based devices.

News Corp:
“Google is commodifying the audience of specialist publishers and limiting their ability to generate advertising revenue. Data aggregators attempt to sell audiences at a steep discount to the original source, for example, access to 75 per cent of The Wall Street Journal demographic at 25 per cent of the price, thus undermining the business model of the content creator.”

Google:
When selling their ad space, publishers can decide which partners they work with, who can buy ads on their website, and who can reach their audiences. Indeed, in a recent press release to investors, News Corp explained that it had created a private advertising exchange to limit the partners it works with to prevent exactly this kind of commoditization. Robert Thomson, News Corp’s CEO, said at the time: “The only way to reach the world’s greatest content and the most prestigious and lucrative audiences is directly through our digital properties. Third parties are no longer invited to the party”. Google works with publishers to protect their content and maximize their advertising revenues.

News Corp:
“Google routinely displays YouTube results at the top of its search pages, even if YouTube is not the original source of that content.”

Google:
A simple Google search for “videos of Robert Thomson News Corp” shows content from the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, and Nasdaq ranked above anything from YouTube. We only show YouTube results when they’re relevant to a search query.

News Corp:
"The shining vision of Google's founders has been replaced by a cynical management..."

Google: 
Larry Page and Sergey Brin are still very much at the helm of Google -- Larry is CEO and both remain the inspiration behind our next generation of big bets... self-driving cars, Loon, Fiber and more.

News Corp:
“Undermining the basic business model of professional content creators will lead to a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society … the intemperate trends we are already seeing in much of Europe will proliferate.”

Google:
People probably have enough evidence to judge that one for themselves :)

Posted by Rachel Whetstone, SVP Global Communications