Google Inc. Continues to face stiff resistance and hostility in the European region, where one legal issue after the other is causing major problems for the company.
As per the new law in Spain, on 16th December Google will have to close down its services in the country. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) said that the new law in Spain will make the publishers charge Google if it uses fragments from their stories in its news. This situation is quite similar to the one in Germany where publishers have been demanding compensation from Google for using their story fragments.
The difference however is that German publishers have reluctantly made peace with the situation by accepting that Google news is valuable to their overall business. On the other hand Spain took the matter further ahead and incorporated the law to force Google to pay the publishers.
Richard Gingars of Google news blogged about the situation and said that according to the new law publishers have to ask Google News to pay for their content whether the internet giant wants to or not. However, since there are no advertisements running on Google news therefore this law is unfair as Google does not make any money through its online news channel. That is why Richard Gingras, Google News Head, called this new law unsustainable.
As a response to the new law Google declared that starting December 16th the company will shut down its News service in Spain and will take off all Spanish publishers from its international services. The law will be introduced in January 2015 but Google has decided to take the necessary steps prior to its introduction and implementation.
The issue of publishers being annoyed by Google using fragments of their stories in its News has been there for a while and many countries have raised this issue prior to Spain; however in previous instances both the publishers as well as Google came to a common ground and decided to work together. For example publishers in other countries have agreed to copyright some of their fragments and make others parts available for Google to use. Another solution to the problem is that publishers sell their stories or part of it to the website and then the website decides on how and where to use it. However, in Spain the law has been imposed on the publishers as well as on Google and it is hurting both parties.
Publishers now do not have a say in whether they want parts of their stories to appear on Google or not. They have to ask for compensation regardless of what they want. As a result Google has decided to withdraw its news in Spain and any traffic that the Spanish publishers were getting vie Google News will now be cancelled, which will affect their businesses.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) News has been running for the past four years and is available in over 70 worldwide editions; the services can be viewed in 35 different languages, which speaks for its popularity among users.
