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France Applies Tax Pressure To Google For Republishing News Snippets

Posted by timothy on from the department-of-rent-seeking dept.

Qedward writes "France may introduce a law to make Google pay to republish news snippets if it doesn't strike a deal with French news publishers before the end of the year, the office of French President François Hollande said. French publishers want to share in the revenue that Google earns from advertising displayed alongside their news snippets in search results. Readers are often satisfied by reading the headline and summary published by Google News, and don't feel the need to click through to the news site, the publishers say. In this way, Google profits and the content creators don't. The publishers want to be able to charge Google to compensate them for ad revenue losses."

8 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Banned from Google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The French really want to be removed from the internet...

    1. Re:Banned from Google? by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Informative

      I wonder if they've ever heard of "robots.txt"?

      Last I heard, Google was honoring it....

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      No sig today...
    2. Re:Banned from Google? by icebraining · · Score: 5, Informative

      Google does let you index block just the News bot without blocking Search; you just have to setup different rules for the "Googlebot" and the "Googlebot-News" useragent. (It's the same bot, but it complies with both rules if they're defined).

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      Dilbert RSS feed
  2. Here's a hint by gman003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If people can get all they want out of a headline and a paragraph, maybe you should focus on making the article have more *content* and less fluff.

    1. Re:Here's a hint by HexaByte · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, indeed. Will these newspapers now put their publications behind darkened glass paper dispensers, so that no one will just look at the headline and decide no to buy it?

      "We want free advertising of our product, but don't want you to make any money doing it for us!" Google should consider charging them for advertising they're giving them.

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      HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
    2. Re:Here's a hint by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Google should consider charging them for advertising they're giving them"

      I like this solution. Google should announce that they will be billing back any fees levied in France against the newspapers they index, plus a bit for administrative overhead. Any paper that doesn't like it can be banned from Google's index.

  3. But what about Mutual Benefits by happy_place · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wouldn't know the majority of news sites if it weren't for Google's aggregation. So I wouldn't click their sites at all. This seems like they're wanting compensation for something that already compensates them by listing them and making their site more visible.

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    http://www.beanleafpress.com
  4. Don't see the argument really by krelvin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If a site doesn't want Google to make money off of their content headlines... then they can easily opt out of having Google pick up their data and index it.

    But NO... they WANT the exposure and get a cut too.... if the law is passed, cut them off. Simple