Tech giants benefitting from news media content are ‘sort of free riders’ – Varadkar

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has described tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter as "sort of free riders" who benefit from content published by other media, such as traditional news outlets.

Mr Varadkar said the next government will want to study a new system mooted by the Australian government which would see Google and Facebook pay media outlets for news content displayed on the companies’ services.

The Australian government this week moved towards a proposal for a system of compulsory payment after talks with Google and Facebook on a voluntary code stalled.

The coronavirus crisis has led to cuts, job losses and closures in the media industry across the world as advertising incomes plummeted. Such income was already migrating massively to companies like Google, Facebook and others – which do drive online traffic to news websites.

Is the end nigh for Google and Facebook’s ‘free ride’ on media?

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Employment

Mr Varadkar said he had read about the Australian idea which he said “seems to be a mechanism by which they can charge online platforms like Google, Facebook and others for their content and seems to be a very good idea”.

"You know I think our tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, all those, are great companies, and obviously create a lot of employment, and a lot of revenue here in Ireland, but they do benefit from content produced by other people. They are sort of free riders on costs incurred by other people. I think this Australian approach is innovative, it's interesting," he said.

“The new government will want to study that and see if it makes sense to promote something similar in Ireland. So, on the face of it is a good idea.

"As I've often seen when it comes to things like this in other countries, what seems to be a good idea at first may turn out not to be. But I definitely think it's something we need to study and it may well be a future approach that we can implement in Ireland and across Europe to share out more fairly, the revenues that media platforms of all sorts make."

On the back of new EU rules, France last year ordered Google to pay publishers for news content shown in search results. Before the new copyright measures were brought in by the EU, Google took measures to work around efforts in Spain and Germany to make it pay publishers. In Spain, it closed its Google News website.