Google News to shut in Spain

Google plans to close its news-linking service in Spain in response to legislation under which publishers will soon be able to force Internet sites to pay for re-publishing headlines or snippets of news.

In a statement, the search giant said the new law makes the Google News service unsustainable and that it will remove Spanish publishers from Google News sites worldwide and shut down this service in Spain on December 16.

The move also means readers in Latin America and around the globe will no longer find links to articles from any Spanish news publishers on Google News.

The change to the copyright law, which is set to take effect in January, only applies to news aggregation sites such as Google News or domestic rival Meneame.

It does not prevent Google users in Spain or elsewhere from reading snippets of the same stories when they look up news in Google search results, where Google stands to capitalise by selling ads alongside news stories that turn up.

“The new law requires publishers to charge Google News for showing even the smallest snippets of their content — whether they want to charge or not,” the company said.

Google News displays no advertising and makes no revenue from the service, it noted.

In Spain and Germany, these laws require publishers who want their content to continue to show up in Google search results to give the company explicit permission to do so.

Google has responded by requiring publishers to release it from any liability for licensing fees under such laws.

The Spanish law thwarts this by giving publishers an “inalienable” right to levy licensing fees.

However, in November, Germany’s largest publisher, Axel Springer scrapped a bid to block Google after an experiment by a consortium of about 200 German publishers caused online traffic to plunge.