Listening to Google: bitter pills, and hard-to-hear truths

A rare chance to hear a voice from within Google who is sympathetic to publishers - just don't assume it will be what you want to hear

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 15:32, 20 November 2025

Listening to Ricky Sutton's recent video podcast with Google News supremo Richard Gingras caused an internal dispute, or even disputes, to rage for some time in my own mind. 

It was actually quite difficult to listen to the other side of the Google v Publishers story, and maybe in such partisan times, that's a broader reflection we could all make. That said, anything that causes the old synapses to start firing in such a manner is good content in my book.

You can watch it here and here.

In short, Gringas made me feel like I was on the losing side in a war, and hearing from the victor exactly how that happened. 

Do not be mistaken, Gringas is no tech bro, or anything of the kind. He's a considered man, who led the Google News Initiative in good faith and clearly cares both about news and about plurality. 

That said, he listed out all the original sins publishers committed to find ourselves where we are now, from being entirely traffic-driven when that played into Google's hands, our lack of self-awareness when it came to the importance of data, to failing to coalesce around any kind of public policy positions when terms where being dictated to us by bigger players.

None of this alters the present reality though, in the era of Google Zero. So can we regard the current traffic declines - which harm Google too, let's not forget, although akin only to a fly ramming a tank - as a new start?

My thoughts circle around what a Google-Publisher alliance might look like. I'm not advocating such a thing as achievable, but I think it a really good exercise to think what it might look like, the sort of exercise Ricky has done many times and continues to do.

We find a group of good people in Google, who understand that their next battle is pumping their AI-driven valuations and income streams, and who believe old-fashioned search revenue won't be the right part of the business to work at when bonus time comes.

What would equip them to have better AIs, and - crucially - tell a better story about why their AIs are better than those of their many rivals?

As always, what makes the difference is having better content going into the AIs, sourced from deal after deal after deal with publishers working in unison with whomever adheres to the new standards of paying for content and sharing the upsides.

Am I completely deluded? I hope not.

Perhaps I am too optimistic of the power of individuals. We should remind ourselves that while Google was handing out good advice on how to run our sites better, it was also decrying the very nature of what many of us do, while also giving us arguably the best platform in history to dissipate that news, and also stealing the fruits of our labours. 

Whatever frustrations we may have with Google, surely some of them stem from the split personalities the company displays, and the realisation that for the laudable actions of many Google individuals we have met, the size of the steamroller meant none of them could after the course in our favour.