PINF's groundbreaking new research reveals how much Google owes to news providers in the UK. PINF's Campaign & Communications Manager Beckie Shuker lays out the evidence.
Big tech has changed news
Google is the world’s dominant search engine, with a market share in the UK of 94 per cent in March 2024 (Statista, 2024). We can all appreciate how easy the platform has made it for us to access information, educate ourselves on important topics, find out what’s going on in the world around us and connect to our communities.
However, Google’s monopoly on news search is directly contributing to the collapse of traditional media business models. Google denies this, arguing that it helps news providers by sending traffic to their websites, allowing them to generate revenue from ad sales (Google, 2020), but hundreds of local outlets have closed in the last two decades, leaving more than four million people in the UK living in news deserts.
Users want trustworthy, independent news in their searches
PINF’s new study, conducted by FehrAdvice, investigates the true value of news to Google in the UK. We surveyed 1484 people in the UK to accurately quantify the size and value of news media to the tech giant. In our experiment, we showed participants different simulations of Google and instructed them to make certain searches to test how people search with and without news content.
We began by asking participants how they inform themselves about current topics and found that 82 per cent use search engines, far more than use other sources such as social media, news apps or print media. The size of Google’s market share shows that it is by far the most frequently used news search service.
When searching Google for information, we found that users value trust, ease of understanding, quality and independence of results most highly in their chosen source of information. Almost 9 in 10 (87 per cent) said it’s important that the information is objective. More than 8 in 10 (83 per cent) said it’s important that the information shown comes from multiple sources. 8 in 10 (80 per cent) said it’s important that their search results are relevant to their inquiry.
Users who looked at the version of Google without news media consistently rated search results lower by these metrics than those looking at a version of Google with news media. Our research shows that professional news content supplies the top qualities that make search results valuable. The inclusion of local media in search results in particular improves users’ perception of independence.
Google needs news
When asked outright, two thirds of participants stated that they prefer Google with news results. 66 per cent of users said they prefer Google search results with national and local media included. When asked how much they would be willing to pay per month for Google search (if they had to pay), participants were willing to pay 34 per cent more for Google with news (£5.09) than without (£3.79). This is a good indicator of the value that news content adds to users’ overall perception of Google, and therefore its brand value.
Google is able to provide more valuable results because of the work of news publishers. However, the value that news generates for Google isn’t shared fairly. News providers are responsible for creating and verifying news content, they employ the journalists, investigate the stories and carry the legal risks. Their work contributes to Google’s profits, but Google doesn’t share the profits equitably with them.
A broken ecosystem
We observed that 4 in 10 users stay within the Google ecosystem after searching for something. People remain on Google rather than clicking through to news media because the answer can be found there directly. Two thirds of users (67 per cent) stop reading after the headline, having gathered the news they were looking for in their information search. Of those who did click on an external link, only 15 per cent were to media outlets.
So, Google is creating negligible amounts of additional traffic to news sites, contrary to its oft-repeated claim, and news providers are stuck. They need to have appealing headlines to get to the top of Google’s search algorithm, but these headlines are so good that people don’t need to click through to the website. Google’s new AI tool is compounding this problem, amalgamating news stories for users at the top of the search page to provide answers without even having to scroll.
Google is clearly dominant in an uncompetitive market. The UK Competition and Markets Authority is investigating Google’s strategic market status, taking its first steps towards regulating the company under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act. Ongoing legal proceedings in the US, Canada and EU are investigating Google and other tech giants’ anticompetitive practices. In the US in 2024, a court found that Google is in violation of antitrust laws due to its monopoly over search, and the Department of Justice has demanded that Google sell its web browser, Chrome (BBC, 2024).
In Canada, Google is being sued by the Competition Bureau, who allege that Google has “abused its dominance position” in relation to its advertising tools (BBC, 2024). In the EU, the European Commission found in 2019 that Google blocked websites from using other advertising brokers, ensuring its own AdSense platform was dominant (BBC, 2024).
Such is its dominance, that in our experiments, despite consistently higher satisfaction ratings when using the version of Google that included news results, a majority of users said they would still return to Google even if the experience had not been satisfactory. This is the living proof of Google’s monopoly position, which is distorting the digital news economy, damaging publishers, and ultimately harming consumers, who suffer from the loss of trusted and trustworthy sources of information, particularly local news.
It’s time to split the bill
Google search is valuable because users are granted access to a wide range of news content, from both large news brands and small, independent news providers. Therefore, the annual value of news to big tech should be shared fairly between all news providers in the UK - large and small, corporate and independent.
Google generated £16.7 billion from search advertising in the UK in 2023 (IAB Europe, 2022), of which 55 per cent, £8.5 billion, comes from information searches (Höppner & Piepenbrock, 2022). News adds value to information searches 66 per cent of the time, meaning that Google generates £5.6 billion with the help of news media content. If this value was split 60:40 with Google, then news providers as a whole would be entitled to a revenue share of £2.2bn – for 2023 alone (Johann et al., 2023). If we factor in the previous years in which Google built up its dominant market position, we could be looking at a total bill of many billions of pounds.
Without independent local news providers, Google would be less trustworthy, diverse, relevant and ultimately less valuable. Therefore, the annual revenue from news to Google should be shared fairly between providers large and small.
References
BBC (2024) Google suggests fixes to its search monopoly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kxpn2k08do Accessed 16th January 2025.
BBC (2024) Canada watchdog sues Google over alleged anti-competitive conduct https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7n1rx04l1o Accessed16th January 2024.
BBC (2024) EU court rules Google must pay €2.4bn fine https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw3e1pn741o Accessed 16th January 2024.
Google (2020) Open Letter to Australians https://about.google/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/ Accessed 19th December 2025.
Höppner & Piepenbrock (2022) Digitale Werbung und das Google Ökosystem p 264.
IAB Europe (2022) AdEx Benchmark 2021 Report, p 43.
Johann et al. (2023) The value of journalistic content for the Google search engine in Switzerland pp 38-40.
Statista Research Department (2024) Leading search engines in the UK 2024, by market share https://www.statista.com/statistics/280269/market-share-held-by-search-engines-in-the-united-kingdom/ Accessed 16th January 2025.