“The ability to link freely,” he added, “meaning without limitations regarding the content of the linked site and without monetary fees, is fundamental to how the web operates.”
Melanie Silva, the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, made the same argument on Friday in the Senate and in a video posted to Twitter, where she asked people to imagine recommending a few cafes to a friend — and then getting a bill from the cafes for sharing that information.
“When you put a price on linking to certain information, you break the way search engines work,” she said. “And you no longer have a free and open web.”
Google and Facebook (along with Twitter and others), however, do not simply link. They frame the work in previews, with headlines, summaries and photos, and then curate and serve up the content while sprinkling in advertisements.
Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Perth, noted in a recent essay that this added value lessens the likelihood of someone clicking into the article, hurting media companies while improving the tech companies’ bottom line.
“It is often in that reframing that advertisements appear, and this is where these platforms make money,” he wrote. He added that the code could be adjusted to charge the companies only when they create previews, not just links.
But Mr. Sims, the main architect of the code, said on Friday in the Senate that Google and Mr. Berners-Lee were simply wrong on the details.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/business/australia-google-facebook-news-media.html
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