Google has published findings from a recent experiment in which it removed news from search results for 1% of users across eight European markets for 2.5 months.
The tech giant claims the results show that news has little to no impact on its advertising business.
The test was conducted in response to European copyright laws that require Google to compensate publishers for using snippets of their content. However, Google argues that publishers overestimate the value of their journalism to its platform. According to its report, the financial impact of removing news was “statistically indistinguishable from zero, either overall or by country.”