I'm in agreement with Nick regarding webfont licenses; they constitute only a small fraction of my earnings. Application licenses prove to be more profitable for me, and they don't depend on the latest font technology. Interestingly, some developers prefer a TTF version with flat kerning.
Having developed numerous Wordpress sites, I've observed that integrating non-Google web fonts into many templates can be challenging. I believe most website developers likely select a font from Google's offerings and consider the task complete.
In the past, some have said that my free font releases negatively impacted the font industry, and there is certainly be a grain of truth in that. However, I always had full agency in deciding which fonts were offered for free and which weren't. I aimed to use the free fonts to highlight the paid ones, though this approach didn't always yield the desired results. Regrettably, it seems the unfavorable trends prevailed. I've stepped back from creating fonts.
Monotype's terms have led to a lack of promotion on their end. Fontspring appears to have relegated new font releases to the background. With major social media platforms facing challenges and the current system favoring derivative typefaces backed by hefty marketing, it's clear that the landscape has shifted. The message that the market is saturated with fonts resonates with me. It's a clear message that we're no longer needed. They just need a handful of fonts with slick promo graphics to promote and maybe that makes sense. In the Letraset days, the world got by with only a few new fonts every year.
Maybe a new type of market will appear someday, but as it stands but I'd be a fool to make another font that nobody even sees.
(My latest font hasn't been out long but has been seen by a million people last week alone. Say what you will about Google Fonts, but if it's users you're looking for, it delivers...)
One hears a lot these days about diversity. If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize over the years, it’s that diversity of content (not to mention quantity) is not enough, there has to be diversity amongst those calling the shots. That’s the problem with monopsonistic mega-corporations such as Google with its free-washing font hegemony.
For instance, my Bellefair, which you were kind enough to commission, is presently used on a mere 24,000 web sites. If 0.01% of those users paid a typical basic annual web licence fee, that would still be more than the design fee I received. Is that fair?
Not necessarily in defense of Google Fonts, but your fee was less than 2.4 web licenses?
I’m puzzled as to why anyone would “Disagree” with my August 28 post, which is entirely factual.
diversity of content (not to mention quantity) is not enough, there has to be diversity amongst those calling the shots.
What this means is that while it’s good to show diversity (in this case, of many different type designers), it’s important that true diversity occurs amongst those who choose which type designers’ work is to be shown. In other words, with regards to Google, there are many thousands of active type designers, yet Dave Crossland (or he and a small group) at Google chooses which designers to commission, and what kinds of typeface they want from them. This is the “chokepoint” effect that occurs with monopsony, in which a very few people control what is marketed to the masses.
free-washing font hegemony.
I coined “freewashing”, along the lines of “greenwashing”. Greenwashing occurs when a company that is abusing the environment promotes itself as a friend of the environment, via some relatively insignificant act. Hence freewashing describes a for-profit business which provides products or services that are “free”, that make it look good. Google (market cap of almost $2 Trillion) does that, with its search engine that is apparently “free” to users, and Bard, also its fonts.
“Hegemony” means domination. Google fonts are used on 50 million live websites There are currently 200 million active web sites; I would expect that a significant proportion use system fonts, but how many, I don’t know. Nonetheless, I would still say that “hegemony” is the correct word, in the monopsonistic sense, as Google is one of the small coterie of corporations that provide most web sites with fonts.
To use Google Web fonts, one must generally care about Web fonts both above a certain minimum and yet below a certain maximum. Some sites care more than can be satisfied with Google's current offerings, hence they pay for commercial or custom fonts. I enjoy reading The New Criterion’s website in its traditional Galliard and the London Review of Books in its Quadraat and the WSJ in its Exchange.
Like other large companies, I lament Google's left hand while appreciating its right hand.
If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize over the years, it’s that diversity of content (not to mention quantity) is not enough, there has to be diversity amongst those calling the shots. That’s the problem with monopsonistic mega-corporations such as Google with its free-washing font hegemony.
(and later:)
I’m puzzled as to why anyone would “Disagree” with my August 28 post, which is entirely factual.
You have to be kidding me.
This is chock full of opinions. One could agree OR disagree, but these are opinions somebody COULD disagree with!
I think I was the person who introduced the term monopsony, so perhaps I can request that we try to use the term reasonably precisely in its meaning? Monopsony is a condition where there is only one buyer in a market and, hence, that buyer dictates price.
That definition does permit us to identify business practices as monopsonistic, i.e. tending towards monopsony, whether with intent or by accident of circumstance, in the same way as we can identify business practices as monopolistic without the condition of monopoly being reached.
I feel Nick is using the term as a stick with which to beat Google and other large corporations active in the type business, and perhaps for that purpose he doesn’t much care whether he has hold of the wrong end of that stick, but I think we may fairly consider whether Google Fonts’ activities are monopsonistic.
Firstly, consider that Google Fonts will only commission or otherwise pay for fonts to be released under a particular libre license, which cannot be considered monopsonistic in that other entities are commissioning or paying for fonts that are published, or not published in the case of proprietary fonts, under a multitude of other license types. [I think Dave ideologically believes that all fonts should be libre, but that’s a different discussion.] One might, perhaps, say that Google Fonts is monopsonistic within the area of libre font publishing, and certainly I expect they spend more money paying for libre fonts than any other single entity, and quite possibly more than most other entities combined. But is this intentionally monopsonistic? It seems to me that Google Fonts has shown no interest in being the only buyer in the libre fonts market; rather, they actively benefit from other entities creating libre fonts that Google Fonts can then include in its library. What they have done with all their spending is to create a new market within the type business. Do they decide where and how to spend their money? Yes. But so does every other commercial enterprise. Does the proliferation of libre fonts and the ease and ubiquity of GF font serving have an impact on the commercial font licensing market? Yes. Free is a difficult price against which to compete (if you want to sell font licenses within a market that includes libre fonts you need to compete on grounds other than price). Does any of that constitute monopsony? No.
[Full disclosure: I’ve taken money from Google Fonts to publish fonts under OFL, and would do so again. The price was in no way dictated by GF: I told them what I wanted and what they would get for the price.]
Thanks John. When you're dead, I'll say, you were a worthy opponent and a good friend. Haha!
What I personally ideologically believe.... isn't very important. I also don't believe in geographical price discrimination but I took a paycut to go remote. Please let's distinguish between me and my employer - an organization which I don't speak for, and can't explain
This is infuriating and I'm aware of other type foundries which alter an employee's salary depending on the country they relocate to. If I moved to Switzerland would they increase my salary? No.
Back to the usual discussion on the international association...
Personally, I would like to hear people refer to “open source fonts” more often than “Google Fonts”. To be clear, there are plenty of topics and ideas in which Google Fonts is relevant (its influence on the industry and the market, the development they pay for, etc.). What bugs me is hearing people say they are using “Google Fonts” when they really just mean they have selected an open source typeface that happens to be distributed by Google. (And yes, I know some people really do use GF.)
Why do I care? Because if one finds a typeface they like in the Google Fonts directory, they absolutely don’t need to deal with Google at all. Using the term “Google Fonts” generically obscures what open source licensing and distribution really is. I’ve found plenty of end users who don’t really understand this.
Personally, I would like to hear people refer to “open source fonts” more often than “Google Fonts”. To be clear, there are plenty of topics and ideas in which Google Fonts is relevant (its influence on the industry and the market, the development they pay for, etc.). What bugs me is hearing people say they are using “Google Fonts” when they really just mean they have selected an open source typeface that happens to be distributed by Google. (And yes, I know some people really do use GF.)
Why do I care? Because if one finds a typeface they like in the Google Fonts directory, they absolutely don’t need to deal with Google at all. Using the term “Google Fonts” generically obscures what open source licensing and distribution really is. I’ve found plenty of end users who don’t really understand this.
Not sure I understand. So people find fonts ‘in the Google Fonts directory’, being ‘distributed by Google’. Yet you expect that people make a finer distinction, ‘open source fonts’ vs ‘Google Fonts’, than this kind of distribution itself suggests?
The number of fonts that have a qualifier as explicit as ‘IBM’ in their name is rather small, isn’t it?
What I pointed out is, if you serve something under a brand, then users will associate that something with that brand. This is expected behavior. If this is considered a fault, then this is hardly users’ fault. In more actionable terms, if it helps, make it more explicit what’s a Google Font and what’s not ...
Karsten, you misunderstand my point. I'm only lamenting the way things are, and wishing for something better. I don't expect people to make a finer distinction, given the circumstances. Maybe we can find ways to eventually change that, though.
What kind of changes might you have in mind, then?
Well, I wasn’t trying to start a big campaign about it. At the moment, I think it would be great if the type people — folks found here and around our community who often educate people about fonts and licensing — could change the way they talk about the open source licensing model (libre fonts if you like), so that the people reading and listening understand more clearly that Google is not the sole source or keeper of these fonts. (Perhaps a supporter or steward?)
Maybe the most elemental suggestion I can make is to not refer to “Google Fonts” when talking about the business/licensing model. Saying “You can use commercial fonts or Google Fonts” perpetuates this misunderstanding. (I’m sure I’m guilty of such phrasing on occasion.)
As I see it, we are referring here to Google Fonts as an entity mainly because of its impact on the market and the position of independent type designers as a consequence. That's so because of its privileged (almost monopolistic) position in terms of control and distribution of internet content.
Other distributors of free and open-source fonts simply can't compare to them in that sense. So I guess, we are using the term "Google Fonts" here because we actually refer to GF, not so about the open-source fonts in general.
While I appreciate the fact that Dave Crossland is here in the first place — compared to gray eminences from Monotype who don't even consider talking to us even though they are aware of this thread — my stance is that that the whole GF thing is conceived to benefit users (Google itself in turn) and not the long-term mutual interest with the type design community. In that sense, I see Dave's idealism as his own narrative, while the fact is that type designers get short-term compensation for the long-term benefit of Google and its users. That's a 100% capitalistic approach hidden behind the open-source and web-font paradigms.
To sublime the previous paragraph, Google has unimaginable benefits from Google Fonts, it's not about any sort of idealism or mission.
If you can't commission all the fonts that meet certain standards, and if you have ultra-centralized decision-making (as Nick points out) then you are not an alternative. You make many more problems than solutions for one of the parties (type designers) in the long term. And you are perfectly aware of that but just don't care because two of three parties benefit (Google and users).
That said, in this discussion, I still see Google as closer to us somehow than any other problematic corporation in the subject (maybe I am wrong, and I regularly revise my point of view based on the information I get in the meantime). If the solution would be to negotiate a better partnership, model, or project (instead of making a completely new solution) I would pick Google much rather than Monotype.
Also, we can learn a lot from GF. Zero price is not the only thing in their super-convenient model for the users. It's the whole UX that could be a real game changer.
And just an example of the point I've made on UX. Licensing is a problematic topic since it is a very important but pretty complex matter.
Dinamo type foundry made an excellent way to bridge this gap, and I think it should become the standard. Instead of just listing the various scenarios in the long-read License doc and putting it somewhere on the site, they give users a short simple questionnaire (this or that, above or below, etc.) with the live update of the price based on the choices.
That way users in simple terms understand their situation and options.
I feel Nick is using the term as a stick with which to beat Google and other large corporations active in the type business, and perhaps for that purpose he doesn’t much care whether he has hold of the wrong end of that stick…
Criticizing behemoths isn’t my only motivation, and not the first. I’m on a perpetual journey of intellectual discovery, so thank you for “monopsony”, which I have tried to align with Cory Doctorow’s brilliant economic analysis of Chokepoint Capitalism.
Rather than the wrong end of the stick, I would suggest that my inaccurate use of monopsony was clutching at a straw, and that the correct stick is oligopsony. Of course, there are many buyers of font licences, but when one considers font users to include those who pay nothing for the privilege, and the ratio in the “market” that Google Fonts has, according to some, “created” for web fonts, of 10,000 (or similar lopsided quantity) to 1, for free to paid, then indeed there are, according to the definition of oligopsony, “very few buyers”.
You make many more problems than solutions for one of the parties (type
designers) in the long term. And you are perfectly aware of that but
just don't care because two of three parties benefit (Google and users).
Given that almost all of humanity belongs to the category «Google and users» as opposed to «type designers», this feels to me like the right way to steer the trolley, as it were.
I think we’re all looking for a sustainable way for new typefaces to be created and to have value and for the people who create them to benefit financially from that value. It is easy to build something that provides short-term benefit to a company and its users; building long-term sustainability is harder, and long term sustainability in fonts means sustaining type designers.
Unlike some other people in this thread, I don’t have a problem with libre fonts being part of market diversification, but I do have concerns about the sustainability of Google Fonts per se. This is a company that is notorious for pulling the plug on services, and I worry that GF is going to reach a saturation point at which managers start questioning whether any more fonts are needed or even if the investment in the webfont service infrastructure itself is worth maintaining.
Comments
In the past, some have said that my free font releases negatively impacted the font industry, and there is certainly be a grain of truth in that. However, I always had full agency in deciding which fonts were offered for free and which weren't. I aimed to use the free fonts to highlight the paid ones, though this approach didn't always yield the desired results. Regrettably, it seems the unfavorable trends prevailed. I've stepped back from creating fonts.
Monotype's terms have led to a lack of promotion on their end. Fontspring appears to have relegated new font releases to the background. With major social media platforms facing challenges and the current system favoring derivative typefaces backed by hefty marketing, it's clear that the landscape has shifted. The message that the market is saturated with fonts resonates with me. It's a clear message that we're no longer needed. They just need a handful of fonts with slick promo graphics to promote and maybe that makes sense. In the Letraset days, the world got by with only a few new fonts every year.
Maybe a new type of market will appear someday, but as it stands but I'd be a fool to make another font that nobody even sees.
One hears a lot these days about diversity.
If there’s one thing I’ve come to realize over the years, it’s that diversity of content (not to mention quantity) is not enough, there has to be diversity amongst those calling the shots. That’s the problem with monopsonistic mega-corporations such as Google with its free-washing font hegemony.
Thanks for catching that.
Greenwashing occurs when a company that is abusing the environment promotes itself as a friend of the environment, via some relatively insignificant act.
Hence freewashing describes a for-profit business which provides products or services that are “free”, that make it look good. Google (market cap of almost $2 Trillion) does that, with its search engine that is apparently “free” to users, and Bard, also its fonts.
“Hegemony” means domination.
Google fonts are used on 50 million live websites
There are currently 200 million active web sites; I would expect that a significant proportion use system fonts, but how many, I don’t know. Nonetheless, I would still say that “hegemony” is the correct word, in the monopsonistic sense, as Google is one of the small coterie of corporations that provide most web sites with fonts.
You have to be kidding me.
This is chock full of opinions. One could agree OR disagree, but these are opinions somebody COULD disagree with!
To prove it wasn't me, I added an Insightful reaction, and the Disagree count remains at 1.
I regret my delay in responding. I'll try this weekend
That definition does permit us to identify business practices as monopsonistic, i.e. tending towards monopsony, whether with intent or by accident of circumstance, in the same way as we can identify business practices as monopolistic without the condition of monopoly being reached. I feel Nick is using the term as a stick with which to beat Google and other large corporations active in the type business, and perhaps for that purpose he doesn’t much care whether he has hold of the wrong end of that stick, but I think we may fairly consider whether Google Fonts’ activities are monopsonistic.
Firstly, consider that Google Fonts will only commission or otherwise pay for fonts to be released under a particular libre license, which cannot be considered monopsonistic in that other entities are commissioning or paying for fonts that are published, or not published in the case of proprietary fonts, under a multitude of other license types. [I think Dave ideologically believes that all fonts should be libre, but that’s a different discussion.] One might, perhaps, say that Google Fonts is monopsonistic within the area of libre font publishing, and certainly I expect they spend more money paying for libre fonts than any other single entity, and quite possibly more than most other entities combined. But is this intentionally monopsonistic? It seems to me that Google Fonts has shown no interest in being the only buyer in the libre fonts market; rather, they actively benefit from other entities creating libre fonts that Google Fonts can then include in its library. What they have done with all their spending is to create a new market within the type business. Do they decide where and how to spend their money? Yes. But so does every other commercial enterprise. Does the proliferation of libre fonts and the ease and ubiquity of GF font serving have an impact on the commercial font licensing market? Yes. Free is a difficult price against which to compete (if you want to sell font licenses within a market that includes libre fonts you need to compete on grounds other than price). Does any of that constitute monopsony? No.
[Full disclosure: I’ve taken money from Google Fonts to publish fonts under OFL, and would do so again. The price was in no way dictated by GF: I told them what I wanted and what they would get for the price.]
What I personally ideologically believe.... isn't very important. I also don't believe in geographical price discrimination but I took a paycut to go remote. Please let's distinguish between me and my employer - an organization which I don't speak for, and can't explain
Back to the usual discussion on the international association...
Why do I care? Because if one finds a typeface they like in the Google Fonts directory, they absolutely don’t need to deal with Google at all. Using the term “Google Fonts” generically obscures what open source licensing and distribution really is. I’ve found plenty of end users who don’t really understand this.
There are many ironies about my 15 year (and counting) adventure to free fonts 🤣
What I pointed out is, if you serve something under a brand, then users will associate that something with that brand. This is expected behavior. If this is considered a fault, then this is hardly users’ fault. In more actionable terms, if it helps, make it more explicit what’s a Google Font and what’s not ...
Maybe the most elemental suggestion I can make is to not refer to “Google Fonts” when talking about the business/licensing model. Saying “You can use commercial fonts or Google Fonts” perpetuates this misunderstanding. (I’m sure I’m guilty of such phrasing on occasion.)
Other distributors of free and open-source fonts simply can't compare to them in that sense. So I guess, we are using the term "Google Fonts" here because we actually refer to GF, not so about the open-source fonts in general.
While I appreciate the fact that Dave Crossland is here in the first place — compared to
gray eminences from Monotype who don't even consider talking to us even though they are aware of this thread — my stance is that that the whole GF thing is conceived to benefit users (Google itself in turn) and not the long-term mutual interest with the type design community. In that sense, I see Dave's idealism as his own narrative, while the fact is that type designers get short-term compensation for the long-term benefit of Google and its users. That's a 100% capitalistic approach hidden behind the open-source and web-font paradigms.
To sublime the previous paragraph, Google has unimaginable benefits from Google Fonts, it's not about any sort of idealism or mission.
If you can't commission all the fonts that meet certain standards, and if you have ultra-centralized decision-making (as Nick points out) then you are not an alternative. You make many more problems than solutions for one of the parties (type designers) in the long term. And you are perfectly aware of that but just don't care because two of three parties benefit (Google and users).
That said, in this discussion, I still see Google as closer to us somehow than any other problematic corporation in the subject (maybe I am wrong, and I regularly revise my point of view based on the information I get in the meantime). If the solution would be to negotiate a better partnership, model, or project (instead of making a completely new solution) I would pick Google much rather than Monotype.
Also, we can learn a lot from GF. Zero price is not the only thing in their super-convenient model for the users. It's the whole UX that could be a real game changer.
Dinamo type foundry made an excellent way to bridge this gap, and I think it should become the standard. Instead of just listing the various scenarios in the long-read License doc and putting it somewhere on the site, they give users a short simple questionnaire (this or that, above or below, etc.) with the live update of the price based on the choices.
That way users in simple terms understand their situation and options.
I’m on a perpetual journey of intellectual discovery, so thank you for “monopsony”, which I have tried to align with Cory Doctorow’s brilliant economic analysis of Chokepoint Capitalism.
Rather than the wrong end of the stick, I would suggest that my inaccurate use of monopsony was clutching at a straw, and that the correct stick is oligopsony. Of course, there are many buyers of font licences, but when one considers font users to include those who pay nothing for the privilege, and the ratio in the “market” that Google Fonts has, according to some, “created” for web fonts, of 10,000 (or similar lopsided quantity) to 1, for free to paid, then indeed there are, according to the definition of oligopsony, “very few buyers”.
Given that almost all of humanity belongs to the category «Google and users» as opposed to «type designers», this feels to me like the right way to steer the trolley, as it were.
Unlike some other people in this thread, I don’t have a problem with libre fonts being part of market diversification, but I do have concerns about the sustainability of Google Fonts per se. This is a company that is notorious for pulling the plug on services, and I worry that GF is going to reach a saturation point at which managers start questioning whether any more fonts are needed or even if the investment in the webfont service infrastructure itself is worth maintaining.