From the Independent:

“What’s happening at the moment is that they [Google] are hoovering up stupendous amounts of money on the back of our content…… They were selling advertising on the basis of aggregating “our” journalism and they were not being charged a penny. “There has to be a price for it; or we won’t do it [gather news]“

Google is making a lot of money out of their news channel, but with few of the costs faced by the media companies. Google are surely going to win this argument. If the media companies pull their news content, they will soon be replaced by new media companies who will welcome the Google traffic with open arms.

Google may as well be saying, as the article points out – “Plenty of Google visitors may find (the news summary snippets) sufficient and not visit you. And anyway we get the ad revenues first. And our share price is now $500. And thanks for the news copy”

The media may want a conversation, but Google may not need to listen.