Don’t blame us for a decline in revenue at news businesses: Google

As Australia debates the draft News Media Bargaining Code that would govern the relationship between news businesses and digital platforms, Google on Monday said that making it responsible for decline in revenue of news publishers would amount to barking up the wrong tree.

Rather, news businesses are making less revenue because they began to face competition from websites that have taken classified advertising online, including Australian platforms like Seek and Domain, Google said.

“The reason news businesses are making less revenue is not because Google exists,” Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google wrote in a blog post.