Google News leaves Spain

Spanish publishers stepped on the same rake that Germany has walked. Dissatisfied with the fact that Google is parasitic on their content, they demanded compensation. Publishers say they lose part of the audience who read the Google News snippet - and that’s enough for them.

As a result, Spain adopted a law similar to German law , according to which, from January 1, 2015, search engines will be charged for display in the search results of the text of publications from the media. The text of the regulation .
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Obviously, the law is directed directly against Google. The authors of the law thought that they would raise up to € 80 million for the stagnant print media industry.

Recall how it ended in Germany. There, according to the "antiguglovsky" law, deductions to publishers are paid by all search engines, except ... Google. The fact is that as soon as Google News stopped indexing the contents of local newspapers, their sites experienced a sharp drop in attendance (what a surprise). As a result, the publishers association backed out and entered into a separate agreement with Google to cancel payments. For the rest, the law has retained action.

“Google News is available in over 70 national versions in 35 languages. This is a service that is loved and trusted by hundreds of millions of readers, including many in Spain, ” says Google News project manager Richard Gingras on the official blog. - Publishers themselves choose whether to participate or not, and an absolute majority choose participation for an understandable reason. Google News brings real benefits by sending readers to publishers' sites, which in turn brings them advertising revenue.

Unfortunately, as a result of the adoption of the new Spanish law, we will soon have to close Google News in Spain. ”

Richard Ginggra explains that Google News does not show ads on the site. Therefore, can not afford to pay such rewards to publishers. In addition, he says that under the new law, publishers are required to receive contributions from Google News, even if they do not want to (this is a rather interesting feature of the law).

Google News stops working in Spain on December 16, 2014, two weeks before the law enters into force.

It is likely that the situation will go further under the German scenario.

Spanish error can repeat and other countries. Recently, the new European Commissioner for digital media and the Internet, Günther Oettinger (Günther Oettinger) publicly supported the idea to adopt a common "tax on Google" , operating in all EU countries.

“If this happens, it will be the worst start for the long-awaited reform of European legislation on the protection of intellectual property,” commented Julia Reda, a representative of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament. “I turned to the European Commission asking how they view the influence of the German copyright law on Google’s dominant market position and whether they plan to adopt other similar laws.”