Indian news channels request Google to share ad revenue

After facing pressures in Australia and then from the Indian Newspaper Society to part with the ad revenue generated using their content, American tech-giant Google now faces the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), the collective of television channels in India, with the same request. NBA has also sent a letter to Google regarding the matter.

Rajath Sharma, the President of NBA, wrote to Sanjay Gupta, the country manager at Google India, "News organisations make heavy investments in employing anchors, journalists and reporters to gather, verify and deliver credible information but are inadequately compensated - the largest share of advertising revenue flows disproportionately to Intermediary Technology Platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook etc."

"Google plays a key role in this value chain as an intermediary and plays a part in delivering this news content to its audiences albeit without sufficiently compensating the content owners," he added.

The letter also called for likewise policy across the globe, noting how Google has agreed to compensate and pay publishers in France, Australia and European countries. "Evidently, there is an urgent need to create an equitable relationship and level the playing field between global tech monopolies and traditional media/ news organisations. Being a multinational organisation, the expectation is that Google will employ principles of universal parity in dealing with News Content owners and employ similar norms in India," the letter read.