Our experiment on the value of European news content
During our negotiations to comply with the European Copyright Directive (EUCD), we've seen a number of inaccurate reports that vastly overestimate the value of news content to Google. To address this and to provide more data to regulators, we launched a public experiment measuring the value of these results for Google by removing European news content for 1% of users in eight countries in the EU.
The results have now come in: European news content in Search has no measurable impact on ad revenue for Google.
The study showed that when we removed this content, there was no change to Search ad revenue and a <1% (0.8%) drop in usage, which indicates that any lost usage was from queries that generated minimal or no revenue. Beyond this, the study found that combined ad revenue across Google properties, including our ad network, also remained flat.
From finding a florist, to getting the weather forecast, to booking a flight, people come to Google for many different reasons. This study showed that people still come to Google for these many other tasks, even when Google is less useful for news. Regardless, we have long supported the news ecosystem in its digital transformation as part of our commitment to a vibrant and healthy content ecosystem. We’ll continue to partner with publishers to help them reach audiences in a world of rapidly evolving technologies.
You can find further detail on the experiment in this report.
Update August 2025: An independent assessment of the EU News Experiment by Coalfire confirmed the setup, execution and calculations were accurately carried out.
