Google news tax floated by think tank

For many years, media executives have chafed over Google's increasing clout over their industry.

Last year, the California tech giant recorded revenues of (US)$74.5 billion. That's nearly nine times higher than the annual revenues generated by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Now, a prominent British media analyst, Justin Schlosberg, has called on Google to share some of its wealth.

In an essay "Virtuous Media: How to improve plurality and transparency", he calls for a one percent levy on Google and other plaforms, which would be administered by an independent Media Plurality Board.

The essay was published by ResPublica, an independent British think tank.

"More and more people are turning to a single source for their stories and if that single source is Google, it is not contributing to the cost of creating the journalism they use," Schlosberg said in a news release accompanying the report.

In a response published in PressGazette, Google stated that it "works with news publishers to increase traffic to their website and help them make money from that traffic".

The company also noted that it shared (US)$10 billion with its AdSense partners last year.

The suggested news tax comes when some Canadian media outlets are bleeding red ink. The company that publishes the most newspapers in Canada, Postmedia Network Canada Corp., has PNC.B variable voting shares trading at just three cents today.

That amounts to a market capitalization of just $7.24 million. 

The PNC.A voting shares are doing slightly better at 3.5 cents for a market capitalization of $8.44 million.

Postmedia owns the Vancouver Sun, Province, National Post, 24 hours Vancouver, and 13 other daily papers in Canada.