There's no such thing as a lopsided game of chicken. Google's aim is to index all the world's information. Media companies aim to be paid for producing it. If the search market were competitive, then normal commercial negotiations would establish some sort of quid pro quo for the exchange. But because search is not – Google is responsible for answering about 70 per cent of search queries – the company has been able to free-ride the internet's content without blinking. Threats to freeze out the search engine will not change those underlying economics.
世界上不存在不對等的懦夫博弈(game of chicken)。谷歌(Google)的目標是將全球所有信息編入索引。媒體公司的目標則是對信息收費。如果搜索市場是一個競爭性市場，那么，常規的商業談判將會確立某種形式的交換補償。但由于搜索并非競爭性市場——谷歌負責回答約70%的搜索查詢——因此，該公司一直能夠免費使用互聯網上的內容，連眼睛都不眨一下。威脅要把這家搜索引擎擠走，并無法改變這些隱含的經濟學。