Dominic Young

Why creating a Schengen Zone for audiences might be the best response to Google’s let off.

Great news: Google have – finally – been judged to be a monopoly in a US lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice.

Less great: they have been punished with the mildest of slaps on the wrist. 

A few weeks ago I wrote  “… publishers and creators … can’t rely on the law, or the government, to protect their rights and businesses. Waiting for common sense or the rule of law to prevail would be folly.”

And so the Google outcome proves. 

There are laws which are supposed to protect creators, notably copyright, as well as laws intended to prevent monopolies. But, where the internet is concerned, they don’t work.

They haven’t worked, in fact, for the entire internet era. Thirty years, more-or-less. Ignoring the law was a business strategy for internet platforms, and the law rewarded them by stepping out of their way. 

Even when, decades late, called out in court, the bizarre punishment is to effectively extend their impunity.

We all hope this will finally, eventually, change. But that hope is longstanding, and it has been repeatedly dashed. There are other lawsuits, other governments, so let’s not abandon it completely. But hope isn’t a strategy. Pleading doesn’t change anything. 

With AI further destabilising the rickety remaining foundations of the news business, we need more than hope. We need a plan, one which doesn’t depend on governments, courts or platforms doing the right thing. 

Let’s take stock. What has been changing lately, and how can we respond to it?

First, AI. It has stretched platform impunity to the ultimate extent, not just helping itself to all the content on the internet and offering creators and publishers nothing in return, but also using the stolen content to build directly competing products of their own. Laughing in the face of the law and draining the remaining resources and revenues of publishers. Hoping that the law will finally step in is a waiting game we don’t have time for. 

Publishers need to seize control of their work, protect their investments and call a halt to wholesale theft and exploitation.

Second, the “open” web. Thanks to AI it’s an increasingly unsafe and polluted place for creators and users alike. 

Anything published openly is instantly stolen and reused by bots. They’re digital superhighwaymen, taking whatever they can find and then selling their spoils on the pavement outside. Where there used to be legal barriers preventing and punishing such wholesale digital looting, publishers now need to fit their own security. They can’t afford to remain part of an anarchic and chaotic “open” web. They need safer digital spaces, and so do their users.

We need to build those safe spaces.

Third, search. By which I mean Google. They have smashed the Faustian pact which kept publishers dependent on them. The implied promise of traffic, and revenue, in return for content has been broken. Their AI output comes first and publisher referrals have crashed. No publisher can depend on Google for anything anymore.

We need to build alternative ways for publishers and humans to discover each other, other ways of generating revenue. They need to lean-in to their need for independence, and strike out on their own.

Put it all together, though, and something positive emerges from those needs. A blueprint for the next, human-centric, phase of the internet. 

Let’s start by separating the humans from the robots. Sniff out the non-humans – now more than half of online traffic – and block the rogues. This will offer some of the protection the law no longer provides, and will lead to a market for good bots to negotiate access on fair terms to suit the publishers.

“NATO for News”, called for by Jon Slade of the FT recently, is already being formed to lead the fight against the denizens of internet’s robot underworld, which hide and disguise themselves to evade detection. Policing them requires a shared posse of digital detectives, finding and blocking them as they try to shape-shift their way past publishers’ defences.

Which leaves the humans. How can publishers improve their online lives as the toxic digital swamp threatens to engulf the whole internet?

This is where the forced retreat from Google might be a blessing in disguise. The imperative to serve Google’s interests has historically put the human users of many publishers’ products in the back seat. We’ve all seen news websites so festooned with ads that the actual content is hard to find. Irritating clickbait. Annoying paywalls blocking access. No wonder most people devote more of their time to getting lost in social media rabbit warrens. 

News products aren’t that way because they’re reflecting what their audiences want and need. It’s because the options for publishers are limited by limited, zero-sum, opportunities in advertising and subscription coupled to Google’s outsize role in discovery, distribution and monetisation. 

Now that Google are withdrawing from their side of that bargain (and quite possibly chalking up the biggest own-goal in history if, as increasingly seems likely, the big bet on AI turns out to be a dud) publishers and humans alike need something else.  Something which isn’t inherently limited, Something where the economics aren’t dominated and controlled by a gigantic, voracious and parasitic monopolist.

It starts with better economics, revenues which scale as users and their interactions grow. It ends with better products, chasing those users and interactions with journeys and content which they actually want and value, and are even willing to pay for. 

All of which can be delivered with surprising simplicity because what I’m talking about is the creation of new networks. The internet is good at those. The building blocks are all in place, literally already in everyone’s pockets and on their desks. 

We need to join publishers and humans together, so that all humans have access to all legitimate publications without endless mad barriers being put in their way. One login, instead of dozens. A Schengen zone for online humans with free movement throughout the network, but where bots without visas have to keep out – along with garbage content produced by unaccountable, anonymous or automated bad actors.

We also need better ways for humans to discover, research and just happen upon content and products from within the network, within other products, instead of solely outside in the open, but increasingly grey, web. Direct connections to content and publications 

Payment, where it is sought, should not demand the hassle of endless sign-ups, logins and promises to pay continuously for something you only want once, and impulsively. 

And the media’s networks will be where the failure of the law to protect content and businesses is mitigated by strict control over access by digital theft machines.

Which brings me back to collaboration. It’s almost absurdly easy for publishers to form this network, change their incentives and start building resilient independence from the digital platforms. The technical pieces are all in place, the user need is obvious and the products will respond and evolve rapidly in response to new incentives. 

The combined reach of the media is population-scale and the “yes but” internal voices, arguing against the risk of change are being silenced by the withdrawal of the status quo as an option by big tech. 

The slow decline of news media has been inexorable, and for many in the midst of it might feel inevitable, the backdrop of their whole careers. But with big tech blowing up the past (and perhaps themselves along with it) we no longer have anything to cling to.

This moment is most definitely existential for the media. 

Whether that means its future existence is thriving, growing and returning to its cultural and economic pre-eminence is a choice for the media to make. Forming the network which will protect and nurture their future is almost as simple as flipping a switch. 

It takes confidence to seize back the controls. But there has never been a better moment. Lets do this together.