Ownership

Google is planning to end its “first click free” policy that enables users of its search engine to bypass paywalls on news websites, a move that could help publishers boost subscriptions, News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson said.

Google for years has encouraged publishers to be part of the program, which allows search users to access a limited amount of content on subscription-based news sites free of charge. Some publishers say the policy has hurt subscription growth and say their sites are penalized in Google’s search rankings if they don’t participate in the program. The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News Corp, opted out of the program in 2017 and saw its traffic from Google search fall 38% and from Google News fall 89% compared with a year earlier because its stories were demoted in search results, a spokesman said. Now, Google is ready to end the first-click-free program and allow publishers to choose how users access their sites from its search results. People familiar with the situation said Google will still enable subscription-oriented publishers to give search users a free sample of their stories if they choose to, but they won’t be penalized if they don’t.

Ellen Pao has a message for Silicon Valley: It's time for the white male-dominated tech industry to "reset" itself.

"When I use the term reset, it's really that we need to shake out the people who don't believe in inclusion and bring in the people who have been excluded," she said. Pao says she figured hard work and her "super power" (sleeping remarkably few hours a night) could overcome the inequities thrown in her path. "It's not something you want to believe. It takes a lot to shake that belief out of you," Pao said. But, when she had trouble getting investments approved and to holding onto companies that were doing well, she noticed she wasn't the only one being denied opportunities that came easily to men. "There's a point where I realized that other women were doing much better work and had much more successful investments than the men," she said. "It made me realize the system really wasn't fair and it really wasn't based on merit."

A speech by the acting chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission pushes back, hard, against a growing clamor among those who fear Internet companies are getting too big. Speaking at Georgetown University, Maureen Ohlhausen said that the public must ask itself whether unelected government bureaucrats are the best qualified to pick the winners and losers in high tech markets.

The speech comes as a narrative has begun to emerge among some critics who charge that companies such as Amazon and Google have become so large they are monopolies that threaten competition. As Chair Ohlhausen put it in her speech, the fear is that “we are spiraling towards a dystopian future where a few giant technology companies will ultimately gain sustained control over our economic lives.” She emphasized that as acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission, the views she expressed were her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the FTC.

We now know that a Russian organization spent two years trying to influence American voters using Facebook. Here are the questions Facebook has yet to answer and why it matters:
What were the demographics of the users who saw the ads, and how were they targeted?
What were the 470 accounts connected to the ad campaign?
What was in the ads, and what types of ads were they?
Was there any overlap between the content used by the Russian campaign and other known campaigns?

Britain’s culture minister said that she was inclined to ask the country’s competition regulator to carry out a detailed review of a bid by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox to take full control of the British satellite television giant Sky. In an address to Parliament, the minister, Karen Bradley, said she was “minded” to refer the $15 billion deal to the Competition and Markets Authority for a more intensive inquiry into concerns about whether Fox would uphold broadcast standards in Britain and whether owning all of Sky would give it too much control of the British media. Sky and Fox have 10 days to respond before Bradley makes a final decision.

Bradley’s announcement move was expected: She had indicated previously that concerns about how much control the Murdoch family would have over the country’s media merited a further review. What was unexpected was the potential for additional scrutiny of whether Fox would uphold broadcasting standards in Britain.

AT&T workers are planning a demonstration outside Apple headquarters on Sept 12 during the highly anticipated iPhone 8 launch to draw attention to their ongoing contract dispute. Members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) say that AT&T has been cutting pay, laying off workers and offshoring jobs at an alarming rate. Hundreds of workers are expected to show up and demonstrators plan to chant and display signs that read “iMay get outsourced by AT&T.” AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said the new contract would offer employees competitive salaries averaging nearly $70,000 a year and that the company is confident the workers will “be better off financially in their new contract.” “As in all of our contract negotiations, we’re committed to working together with the union to reach a fair agreement that will allow us to continue to provide solid union careers with excellent wages and benefits,” Richter said.

[Commentary] Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg should publicly testify under oath before Congress on his company’s capabilities to influence the political process, be it Russian meddling or anything else. If the company is as powerful as it promises advertisers, it should be held accountable. And if it’s not, then we need to stop fretting so much about it. Either way, threats to entire societies should be reckoned with publicly by those very societies and not confined to R&D labs and closed-door briefings. If democracy can be gamed from a laptop, that shouldn’t be considered a trade secret.

Google has appealed a record $2.9 billion fine from the European Union over its comparative shopping service, the EU Court of Justice announced. The EU’s enforcement wing, the European Commission, issued the massive penalty in June, accusing Google of boosting its own comparative shopping tool in its search results at the expense of other services. “What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” said EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager at the time. “It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."

Public interest watchdogs are concerned about a proposed merger that could have big implications for rural broadband as it nears the regulatory finish line. CenturyLink’s $34 billion deal to acquire Level 3 Communications would create a potentially formidable competitor to AT&T in the telecommunications market to handle heavy internet traffic for businesses. But opponents say it would hurt broadband access for rural providers by eliminating access to wholesale rates for critical fiber connections to the internet backbone — the high-speed transmission lines that connect users’ various internet service providers to each other.

Level 3 Communications is the sixth largest provider of fiber in the United States by volume and has a broad footprint, with availability across the country. It’s also, notably, a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). If approved, the merger would give CenturyLink, one of the largest incumbents, ownership of Level 3’s valuable fiber assets, which are currently available at wholesale rates — but may not be if they come under CenturyLink’s control.

CenturyLink said in its semiannual report to the Federal Communications Commission that 53% of urban-area customers in the former Qwest territory can get speeds of 40 Mbps or higher. However, the number of customers that can get higher speeds in rural areas is far lower, showing again the divide between these markets. While the telecommunication company has seen some improvement over the past year, only 24.1% of its rural-area Qwest customers can get access to a 40 Mbps connection. A key contributing factor to this disparity is the challenge of deploying copper-based broadband.