> How do you plan on balancing this overly strict definition of value with a sustainable model of funding (critically necessary) investigative journalism?
Allow people interested in paying for content to pay for content, and then use the discovery mechanisms the content owner makes availlable for that content.
If the content owner wants to promote content that isn't available to the general public via search engines, they can buy search ads like anyone else.
They don't need a subsidy at Google's (and, in terms of time, Google users') expense by way of organic search results for content that most search users will not be able to access when they click the result.
> The commoditization of search can't come soon enough. Google shouldn't be able to monopolize this space.
Commoditization of search (which means heavy competition focussed on minimizing costs) isn't going to make it any more likely that competing public search providers are going to subsidize paywalled content that their users can't use.
Allow people interested in paying for content to pay for content, and then use the discovery mechanisms the content owner makes availlable for that content.
If the content owner wants to promote content that isn't available to the general public via search engines, they can buy search ads like anyone else.
They don't need a subsidy at Google's (and, in terms of time, Google users') expense by way of organic search results for content that most search users will not be able to access when they click the result.
> The commoditization of search can't come soon enough. Google shouldn't be able to monopolize this space.
Commoditization of search (which means heavy competition focussed on minimizing costs) isn't going to make it any more likely that competing public search providers are going to subsidize paywalled content that their users can't use.