So newspapers keep pointing to the massive numbers of dollars Google makes on advertising as proof that it, Google, needs to start sharing some of that money with papers. A key claim is that Google makes more from selling ads that appear against search results containing links to the paper’s content than the papers are making from ads on their own site.

But here’s a question: Are they?

Specifically, has anyone tried to figure out how much Google makes from ads that are placed against search results containing links to, for instance, The New York Times versus how much the NYT makes from that content? That seems to be a more apples-to-apples comparison than looking at what Google makes from all their advertising streams up against what papers are making.