After resisting for years, Google agrees to pay French news sites

There are 2 core issues with this.

The first is that pay per click encourages bs clickbait nonsense. That's exactly what we don't want. "5 Reasons it's the Jews fault you're fat" is gonna get a lot more money than actual investigative journalism on an important but boring topic.

Second, the sites all steal from each other. When one paper actually does an investigation, spends a shit tonne of time and money, takes a risk and finds something, every other paper prints the same story reworded 5 minutes later. Why should anyone but the first paper get paid?

As usual, "something much be done and this is something". I'm actually no averse to finding news, quite the opposite. I just think to many programs are there to funnel money to the likes of Murdoch. No one has worked out how to make journalism pay in the digital age yet...

they should be paying all sites they steal from.