Google does more than that, much more, particularly now with page summarisations and embedded info.

gehenna:

 

Google does more than that, much more, particularly now with page summarisations and embedded info.

 

I haven't encountered that yet, but that would make things different. Still, I don't see a case for charging for search indexing and displaying links to articles. Breaks the foundations that web search is built on in my opinion.

If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.

Aaron2222:

 

alasta:

 

The free to air commercial model isn't really viable any more due to Meta and Google hoovering up all the advertising revenue

 

 

To what extent is this actually true though? I can't speak for Meta (since I don't use Facebook), but Google News just links to the article (doesn't even show a blurb, just the headline and sometimes a picture). Granted, that does reduce ad revenue on news site's home pages (since Google News replaces that), but they still get it on the articles themselves. Or do people just read headlines these days?

 

Meta and Google offer their own advertising products, so they are taking a share of the advertising market that would have otherwise been available to traditional media. The tech giants have a very compelling advertising offering because they can execute very targeted campaigns. 

Kyanar:

 

Throwaway emails these days are so much easier thanks to password managers like Proton Pass. Whenever you fill in a form, it prompts you to create an @passmail.com alias that forwards to your real inbox and can be deactivated if it gets leaked. And it's from the team that made Proton Mail and Proton VPN, so you know it's privacy by design.

 

Yes, iPhones have had this feature for a while and I find it useful for entities such as hotels who have a legitimate reason to need to contact me for a fixed period of time, and thereafter have a nasty habit of sending nuisance emails.

For sites like ThreeNow I have a single throwaway address that directs everything into a quarantine folder that I rarely look at because I don't see any genuine need for them to ever contact me. 

Aaron2222:

 

I haven't encountered that yet, but that would make things different. Still, I don't see a case for charging for search indexing and displaying links to articles. Breaks the foundations that web search is built on in my opinion.

 

Probably get closer to the detail of the issues and then form an opinion.  This is an ongoing situation across a number of years that started in the early-mid 2010s when Facebook was an actual daily destination for most.   It's a reason the EU brought in rules that have seen big-tech wind down or limit access to some services in that jurisdiction. This has been going on long enough to know that the foundation of search you refer to was an illusion, or at best a con.   

FWIW 1news site going away - https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tvnz-set-to-unveil-new-strategic-plan-proposals-sense-of-anxiety-and-sadness/INMWHIND4JGAXABXS4IPWBB3DY/ 

wellygary:

 

"TVNZ + and ThreeNow also require a login to be able to watch their news, so can anyone tell me WHY these news sites want you to login before you can use them. Is this really necessary considering that after you have logged in you gain free access to their content?"

 

 

 

As others have mentioned, its all analytics.. it gives them a much better understanding of who is watching how much, 

 

TVNZ in particular know that more and more advertising is movign digital, so they want to be able to offer up demographic info (even if its not guaranteed correct) to try to attract advertisers.

 

I see that the Stuff required login has been discussed earlier here:

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=315258

I agree that if everyone truthfully filled out all the sign-up details, including the optional details, the information harvesting may be worthwhile. But, for ThreeNow, for example, all I had to give them was my email address, my first name, which I entered as "Fred", and my last name, which I put down as a single letter "Z". However, everything else, including gender and date of birth was optional, so I left these fields blank. Now what use would this scant information be to anyone? 

gehenna:

 

Probably get closer to the detail of the issues and then form an opinion.  This is an ongoing situation across a number of years that started in the early-mid 2010s when Facebook was an actual daily destination for most.   It's a reason the EU brought in rules that have seen big-tech wind down or limit access to some services in that jurisdiction. This has been going on long enough to know that the foundation of search you refer to was an illusion, or at best a con.   

 

I'm open to being convinced if there's more going on than search indexing of news articles for Google Search and linking to news articles from Google News. Obviously there's AI stuff now, but a lot of that seems to postdate a lot of this kind of legislation happening overseas, and it's not something I recall having ever seen on Google in relation to news stories. I do agree that Google owning an ad network that the news sites use isn't good. I'd love to see AdWords split out from Google.

I'll admit I have no idea what Facebook/Meta is doing. I've never had an account and I've only ever used it signed out to view pages occasionally. But I just don't buy search indexing or collating links to news articles as something that should need payment to do (given it to me seems to go against the foundation that web search as a whole is built on, and that driving traffic to news articles shouldn't be a bad thing). Sure it means people don't view news sites home pages as much, but I'd expect that to be outnumbered by news article views themselves? And I don't see how this would take advantage of revenue for views of news articles themselves away from news outlets, unless of course there's more going on. But none of the news articles I've seen have mentioned anything of the sort. But do enlighten me...

richms:

 

FWIW 1news site going away - https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tvnz-set-to-unveil-new-strategic-plan-proposals-sense-of-anxiety-and-sadness/INMWHIND4JGAXABXS4IPWBB3DY/ 

 

Yes TVNZ is planning to do this, but at this stage it's a "proposal" presented to staff at the meeting.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/350442247/tvnz-proposes-axe-its-1news-website-early-next-year

The proposal didn't appear to suggest that readers should be asked to pay a subscription to access the 1News website.

frednz:

 

Yes TVNZ is planning to do this, but at this stage it's a "proposal" presented to staff at the meeting.

 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/350442247/tvnz-proposes-axe-its-1news-website-early-next-year

 

The proposal didn't appear to suggest that readers should be asked to pay a subscription to access the 1News website.

 

You know as well as all of us that this is a done deal like the last lot of proposals to save money where they said they might cut all those shows and then they went and cut them anyway.

alasta:

 

I have a paid subscription to Newsroom, which obviously requires logging in to get behind the paywall. I also have a log in to ThreeNow but I use a throwaway email address for that so they can't spam me. I don't use any of the other sites that you mentioned.

 

I also have a paid Newsroom subscription, and they have reasonable content. As do the Telegraph and the New York Times.

But pay for the poorly-written and slanted rubbish, advertorials and clickbait that pass for "news" on Stuff? That's a hard no from me. At any price. We did use to like doing the quiz at work (but stopped then they made it mandatory to log in for it), but that's the only content of value Stuff has IMO.

JimmyH:

 

alasta:

 

I have a paid subscription to Newsroom, which obviously requires logging in to get behind the paywall. I also have a log in to ThreeNow but I use a throwaway email address for that so they can't spam me. I don't use any of the other sites that you mentioned.

 

 

I also have a paid Newsroom subscription, and they have reasonable content. As do the Telegraph and the New York Times.

 

But pay for the poorly-written and slanted rubbish, advertorials and clickbait that pass for "news" on Stuff? That's a hard no from me. At any price. We did use to like doing the quiz at work (but stopped then they made it mandatory to log in for it), but that's the only content of value Stuff has IMO.

 

Stuff's latest commercial strategy is to put proper journalism onto the regional newspaper branded sites (Dominion Post etc.) which have paywalls. The Stuff branded site is then where you go for fluff pieces. 

We subscribe to the local Stuff newspaper at work and I find some of the content quite interesting so I think a lot of people would be willing to pay to read it online, but personally I think Newsroom is a bit better in its editorial presentation.